Day Tripper

Bletchley Park and Wollaton Hall

One of my sabbatical goals is for Lynne and I to visit somewhere new each week. Week one we visited Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes and this week Wollaton Park in Nottingham.

Bletchley Park is a nineteenth-century mansion and estate near Milton Keynes constructed during the years following 1883.

The parks notoriety however spans back to just May 1938 when the mansion and 58 acres of land was bought by Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). The estate was used as the central site for British (and subsequently, Allied) codebreakers during World War II, although at the time of their operation this fact was a closely guarded secret. During the Second World War, the estate housed the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. At its peak 9,000 people worked in the mansion and the many huts dotted around the grounds.

According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the “Ultra” intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain. The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital electronic computer. Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid 1970s.

Wollaton Hall and deer park is an Elizabethan mansion in the suburbs of Nottingham with 500 acres of beautiful grounds and a lake – obviously a must have for any reputable mansion! The mansion was build in 1588 and the building presents an imposing site sat on top of a hill. The mansion houses the Nottinghamshire Natural History Museum – an impressive array of stuffed animals and the surrounding buildings house cafe’s, shops and other interesting exhibits. In 2011 the site was used as Wayne Manor for the filming of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.

Thank you for the feedback on my first blog. Some great support for my decision to take the sabbatical leave, I’d love to pack all those that offered in my suitcase but alas……

The first two weeks have been great and no regrets so far. It’s nice to have time. I’ve been very active (98,000 steps last week) and very productive, cooked loads and got some of my jobs ticked off the list. I even leant to use the washing machine today something that will be useful when I head to Ireland.

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