E102 - Collegiate Connections

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2019

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

December 2019

During World War Two, 34 alumnae of St Hugh’s College Oxford ended up working at Bletchley Park and its Outstations and In March 2020 the college will be holding a symposium to celebrate them.

In this, the last of three episodes this month, our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne tells us how this has opened up a potential new source for us to discover more of our Veterans and to hopefully capture more stories before it is too late.

The rest of this episode is given over to the fascinating stories of Wenda Reynolds and Nancy Sandars two of those St Hugh’s College ladies.

Bletchley local, Miss Wenda Reynolds worked at GC&CS in both the Mansion and Hut 9 from 1941 till 1945.

Miss Nancy Sandars served first as a motorcycle despatch rider, and then joined the WRNS as a Y-Service Wireless Operator.

In memoriam, Miss Wenda Reynolds (1914-2017) and Miss Nancy Sandars (1914-2015)

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The from the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:42.2	Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast. Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast,
0:50.4	Collegiate Connections. During World War II, 34 alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford, ended up working at Bletchley Park and its outstations, and in March 2020, the college will be holding
0:54.7	a symposium to celebrate them. In this, the last of three episodes this month, our oral history
1:00.7	officer, Jonathan Byrne, tells us how this has opened up a potential new source for us to discover
1:05.6	more of our veterans, and to hopefully capture more stories before it's too late.
1:16.2	The rest of this episode is given over to the fascinating stories of Nancy Sanders and Wenda Reynolds,
1:18.4	two of those St Hughes College ladies.
1:31.3	All of the information we gather from our veterans alongside their recollections allows us to look at their experiences from many different perspectives.
1:35.8	One theme we've been investigating recently is veterans who joined us as alumni from universities or colleges.
1:42.5	Jonathan, do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?
1:44.9	Yes. The role of honour shows us that 540 people who worked for Bletchley Park were university graduates.
1:51.9	And I should stress, those are the ones we know about. It could well be that many more went to
1:55.5	university. These graduates came from a widespread of institutions across the UK and beyond.
2:04.6	We've been particularly looking into one college, is that right? Yes, we were contacted by St. Hughes College, Oxford, which during the war was an all-women college.
2:10.6	And between myself and the college, we established that 34 of their alumni worked for Bletchley Park, mostly at Bletchley Park, but a few at the Y stations as well.
2:21.3	And why do we think so many just from that one college would have ended up here?
2:24.3	I'm not entirely sure. It may well be there were personal contacts between somebody here and back at the college,
2:30.3	and certainly with other universities and colleges, we do know that there were links between,
2:34.3	for example, Gordon Welchman and some of the Cambridge colleges. So it may well be there were
2:37.8	similar links from here back to St. Hughes. And what sparked the interest in St. Hughes?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bletchley Park, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bletchley Park and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.