Bletchley Park lands £4.6m restoration bonanza

Wartime codebreakers HQ Bletchley Park has won a grant of £4.6m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The much-needed funds will be used to build a visitor centre at the historic WWII number-crunching centre as well as carrying out restoration work on other buildings at the facility - once matched funding of £1.7m from private- …

[Andrew Holt]

Great news

That's great news, it's a great day out and packed full of interesting exhibits.

Interesting news - an entry ticket lasts a whole year from the date of purchase...

[BrentRBrian]

Tech Companies

It would be nice to see IBM, Oracle, Microsoft or Apple step up to the plate and help out this effort.

Hey Larry, I hear IBM's check is BIGGER THAN YOURS.

[bleh_meh]

Awesome news. As an aussie war crypto enthuasuist I love hearing such good news about Bletchley Park.

So much is said about ensuring that history is preserved that the funds are directed to making sure that physical things like ordnance and equipment is kept for historical needs that the other factors that made the wars successful such as intellengence gathering are left out.

Thank you for committing to preserve a great history.

[HansG]

Great news!

As Andrew said, a superb day out at Bletchley, too much to fit in a day really, will be going back soon. Entry fee was good, considering you can go again within a year and free guided tours around the place, from very knowledgeable chaps

Tremendous amount of history here, which needs preserving!

[LeeV]

Well Done!

Well done to Bletchley Park for getting the funding promise from the HLF!

It's a terrific place to visit, crammed full of WW2 kit. Thoroughly recommended!

If that's not of interest, they also have the "National Museum of Computing" on the same site.

Now that is a real eye opener, all the micro's of my yoof, and mainframes going back to the year dot, many of which have been rebuilt by hand.

[John G Imrie]

Action this Day

Now there's a man who knew the value of his technical department.

[Just Thinking]

At last

A lot of volunteers have put in a lot of effort over the years to stop this place falling down altogether, its great to see that they will finally have some proper funding.

The National Museum of Computing is a very interesting place. Just a tiny bit depressing how many of the museum pieces I have used myself in the past. Punched tape...

Good luck to them. Its well worth a visit.

[Cliff]

This news made me cry

in a good way :,-)

[David Pollard]

Just in time ...

... for next year's celebration of Alan Turing's centenary.

[s 2]

NOT ENOUGH!

Read: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/10/action-this-day-heres-how-to-help.html

Why should they raise more? Why isn't the Soul of the Free World, and the Birthplace of Modern Computing - a Global Protected Site?

Where's Lewis Page when you need him?

[Alan Brown]

about time - but not enough

Honestly folks, the site needs as many donations as it can get.

Chip in please.

[Minophis]

Good news

Bletchley Park was as critical to deciding the outcome of WWII as anywhere and as if that wasn't enough was also the birthplace of modern computing. This place deserves to be protected and to become the great visitors attraction it could be so future generations can learn of the brilliant ground-breaking work that was done at Bletchley and why we all owe so much to those who served there.

I have been a couple of times and intend to visit again. i would recommend it to anyone especially if they have an interest in history, computing or cryptography.

I hope they pass a some of the money on to the NMC.

[Tim Cockburn]

Bletchley Park Pics

Some great pictures here including ones of my mother in law Merriss, a Y service vet showing the radio hams how she copied morse code 67 years after she took German messages down for Bletchley park.

http://www.fntn.co.uk/rodwp/BletchleyPark-4Sept11/