Extra - E23 - From Bletchley to GCHQ Part 1

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2013

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

June 2013

Bletchley Park as you know was the home of code breaking during WW2, its official title being the Government Code and Cypher School. After the war this became, as it’s still known now, GCHQ. First based in Eastcote, but in 1951 moving to its current home of Cheltenham.

BBC Radio Gloucestershire recently ran a series of short programs in Anna Kings daily show about both establishments and have kindly said we can share them here with our Podcast Listeners.

Many thanks to BBC Radio Gloucestershire, Anna King & Manpreet Mellhi.

#BPark, #BBCGlos, #GCHQ, #BletchleyPark

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:37.1	This is M.C. Fontaine, welcoming you to another Blexley Park podcast Extra.
0:42.9	You won't need me to tell you that during World War II, Bletchley Park was the home of the codebreakers.
0:47.9	Its official title being the Government Code and Cipher School.
0:52.2	After the war, this became, as it's still known now, GCHQ.
0:56.9	It was first based in Eastcut, but in 1951 moved to its current home of Cheltenham.
1:02.8	BBC Radio Gloucestershire recently ran a series of short programmes in Anna King's Daily Show
1:07.2	about both the establishments and the people that have worked there and live there.
1:11.3	And they've kindly said that we can share them here with our podcast listeners.
1:31.3	When we think of the Second World War, what comes to mind? Evacuations, rationing, armed combat and deadly force?
1:36.3	What about the work going on at the site of Britain's code-breaking headquarters throughout World War II?
1:42.3	The forerunner to GCHQ in Cheltenham, the place where Alan
1:46.7	Turing and other codebreakers were based. We may look at GCHQ as the home to the world's secrets
1:52.8	today, but we're going back to where for some veterans living in Gloucestershire, it all began,
1:59.1	Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes,
2:04.0	which almost didn't make it into the 21st century.
2:08.4	Come 1991, we were just back from our last post,
2:13.0	I was in Pretoria, got back home and I was due to retire next year.
2:19.5	And I heard a whisper down the line from, in fact it came from Cheltenham, that Bletchley Park was going to be demolished and is going to be a housing estate. The idea was with planning
2:25.3	permission for 300 plus houses, plus a small superstore, plus a petrol station. And I thought,
2:32.7	no, we can't have that. My name is Peter Westcombe, and I'm a volunteer at Letchley Park,
	...

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