E83 - Bletchley Park & Beyond Part 2

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

December 2018

In this second of our two episodes this month we bring you two more interviews from our Oral History Archive.

Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years with our Veterans’. Now with the support of Milton Keynes Council the project is being extended to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park.

Judith Wainer couldn’t have been a closer neighbour to Station X as she lived on Wilton Avenue. Her family had senior GC&CS staff billeted on them but she never got to see what was inside the fence that was literally at the end of her road. In this interview she is joined by her childhood friend Jean Cheshire who grew up with her family during WW2 living in Cottage 2 within that very fence, as her father Robert was Chief Groundsman, Quartermaster, driver and Head of the Refreshment Hut.

Jimmy Thirsk joined the Intelligence Corps in April 1942, first serving at Beaumanor before coming to the Home of The Codebreakers later that year. Even at the age of 100, when this interview was recorded, his detailed recall of the vitally important Traffic Analysis work he did in the SIXTA Group is astonishing.

In memoriam, James “Jimmy” Thirsk (1914-2018)

Image of Jimmy Thirsk: ©Jimmy Thirsk

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory

Transcript

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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.
0:38.4	Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast. Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast, Bletchley Park and
0:43.6	Beyond.
0:45.4	In the second episode this month, our oral history officer, Jonathan Byrne, shares two
0:50.0	more interviews that really represent why the oral history project is so important to Bletchley Park.
1:03.2	We're hearing in our oral history project at the moment from some very close neighbours to
1:08.2	Bletchley Park, aren't we? Yes. Judith Weiner actually grew up during the war
1:13.0	in Wilton Avenue, the road that leads into Bletchley Park and used to be one of the main entrances
1:18.0	to Bletchley Park. And she told us about how her parents had bought one of the houses in
1:22.3	Wilton Avenue, brand new in the 1930s. And of course, as with so many local people, had staff billeted on them. Now, she does mention their names in the 1930s. And of course, as with so many local people, I had staff billeted on them. Now,
1:30.2	she does mention their names in the interview, but from what I can recall, they were quite sort of
1:34.7	senior people, because I suppose if you're going to have senior people here, you've got to be,
1:37.8	have them billeted as close as possible. So literally outside the gates would be a good place
1:42.6	to do it. But, of course, one thing she never did was she never went into Bletchery Park.
1:47.9	Those gates were an obstacle that she certainly, until much more recently, she never went through.
1:53.3	I'm very pleased to be interviewing Mrs Judith Weiner, formerly Jarman,
1:57.7	who is going to tell us about growing up near Bletchley Park in wartime.
2:01.5	And also here, maybe to help from time to time, is Jean Cheshire, Ney Budd, who many of us
2:07.3	will know. So, Judith, can you just start with your story from a very young age, you know,
2:11.9	right? My father was having the house built, because there was land being sold from Hubert Faulkner,
2:18.4	yes, the mansion, yes.
	...

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