Bletchley Park

Overview

Discover the incredible achievements of Britain’s World War Two Codebreakers, in the place where it happened – Bletchley Park.

Discover how Bletchley Park, a country estate, was secretly chosen to be a wartime base and how GC&CS began urgently preparing to increase its peacetime workforce of around 150 in order to cope with the huge codebreaking task that was coming.

The team of early pioneers who set up the wartime codebreaking headquarters at Bletchley Park in the build-up to World War Two, this is a story of teamwork and ingenuity at a time of global challenge. The exhibition is spread out over five sections in the Drawing Room in the historic Mansion, one of the first rooms to be used by the Codebreakers in autumn 1939.

Discover objects, personal stories and enjoy thrilling moments of interaction as you explore The Intelligence Factory, which focuses on Bletchley Park’s wartime operations from 1942 to 1945. Explore a key part of the Bletchley Park story and how it operated at an industrial scale to meet operational demands, with a multi-skilled workforce of around 9,000.

During the second half of World War Two, Bletchley Park rapidly increased its multi-skilled workforce to meet operational demands. The site expanded hugely to a workforce of 9,000, 75% of whom were women. Staff worked around the clock to supply an ever-growing demand for signals intelligence, converting a mountain of enemy communications into actionable intelligence that would ultimately help win the war.

Find out how Bletchley Park operated during this critical time when the outcome of World War Two hung in the balance.