Future looking brighter for Bletchley Park

SIMON GREENISH is the director of the trust that looks after Bletchley Park, a national treasure which has struggled in the past to secure any form of funding, and was until recently threatened with falling into terminal disrepair.

The country park and mansion, which was once the best-kept secret in war time Britain, was at risk of sinking into obscurity, bogged down by spiralling maintenance costs and an unwillingness at Whitehall to recognise the massive contribution that those who toiled day and night breaking Nazi codes had made to the way we all live in the world today.

After three years of fighting for funding, and struggling to keep the facility operational, Greenish reports that Bletchley Park is running on an even keel financially, but he is still keen to point out that the Government could do so much more.

"Bletchley Park is a stand-alone organisation and we have to earn our way through every year", he told us at a recent special event at which the largest collection of wartime cipher systems ever gathered was on display. "We have had considerable support this year from English Heritage, Milton Keynes council and various other bodies to the tune of approximately one million pounds, which is making a huge difference to us. We are using that money to repair the effects of the ravages of time on the site."

And it is all too obvious that the park is suffering badly from decades of neglect. Many of the huts which housed the men and women who broke the Nazi codes are closed to the public. Windows are boarded over in many places and whole areas of the complex are fenced off.

"I don't think anything of any significance has been done for 30 years," continues Greenish, "so you can imagine just how bad some of the buildings really are. We have just spent £400,000 stripping the roof and putting it back again. We had to. The roof had literally reached the end of its life and the building would have been lost had we not done something to it."

The fact that the main mansion house was only narrowly saved from complete disaster is a small comfort to the trust director, but his enthusiasm for the task that he and his team face in maintaining the rest of the complex sparks his optimism visibly.

"There is a lot of historical maintenance work which has not been carried out. We've had a very good start, but we also have a Lottery application pending which we're hoping to get a decision on at the end of this month. That money will go towards developing the museum and restoring the iconic and historical wooden huts and buildings."

Interest in the codebreaking HQ and its many exhibits gained a welcome boost a few years back with the release of the movie Enigma which - despite not being shot at the actual site (no doubt due to the poor state of repair at the time) and having the film industry's usual scant regard for history - did much to raise the museum's profile.

"That spike soon dropped off, but visitor numbers are currently tremendous," says Greenish. "Over the last two and-a-half to three years, they have virtually doubled and there is every indication that we are going to reach 100,000 visitors this year."

Asked wether the vast majority of visitors are local people, Simon replies, "We get visitors from all over the world. Just today, if you go and meet some of the people who have come to look at the one-off display of Enigma machines we have here, we have people from America, Canada, Sweden and all over Europe. We're quite lucky because we have the gate income from visitors which is heading off for a million pounds at the moment."

Those visitors are in for a truly unique experience, as Greening points out. "Bletchley Park commemorates the extraordinary work done in World War 2 where the codebreakers here deciphered so much of the German communication systems to the huge advantage of the allies.  I think it's generally recognised that the work of the codebreakers shortened the war by two years, and in certain instances made a complete difference. For example the Battle of the Atlantic was really won at Bletchley Park, which is slightly ironic as we're about as far from the sea as you can get in Britain."

Asked if he subscribed to the theory that the Bletchley codebreakers effectively won the war, Greenish is more cautious. "Historians don't like to speculate, but there is a scenario that asks, had we lost the Battle of the Atlantic, could we continue to fight? There are people who would say that this made the complete difference. I don't think there's any doubt that the way we live now has been influenced by the work of the codebreakers in World War 2 because the War was shortened. There's no question about that."

Like most organisations of its kind, Bletchley park has been forced to mine other sources of income to stay afloat and Greening and his dedicated team have done all they can to keep the facility going. "We also do weddings, conferences and corporate events and we have many other buildings here. Some of those are let out so we have a subsidiary source of income which is probably a third of our gross income, which many museums don't have.

"The difficulty we have, however, is running on a day-to-day basis. Because of the recession we have lost some income and it's very tight. We run on a shoestring. It's the daily running costs where we would like the government to support us more than they currently do.

"At the moment we are working on a balanced budget which something that is very positive indeed. We are earning our way through the year and managing to put some of that earned income back into the site. But it's not very much. We would really like £250,000 a year just to tide us through the period between now and when the museum is developed. We've done our business planning and once we've completed the development we'll see our visitor numbers go up hugely and our maintenance costs go down.

"In five years time we'll be substantially more solid financially. We just need to fill the gap. At the moment we are genuinely running on a shoestring." µ