The estate of Bletchley Park is most famously recognised as the place where most of the German Enigma code was cracked in World War 2.
It was originally a farmhouse which was extended to become the mansion it is today by London financier Sir Herbert Samuel Leon and remained his family home until the death of his wife in 1937, then the estate fell into the hands of property developers. There was a growing need for housing space due to the fact that London was grossly overpopulated, so this must have been like Christmas for the developers! The buildings which made up the estate were going to be demolished, that is until war broke out and Bletchley Park became one of the most important places of the time.
When Hitler was gaining power towards the end of the 1930’s London was not a safe place to be, and so the Government code-breakers needed a new home. Bletchley Park turned out to be a perfect place for this very need, it was situated at the centre of a major road, rail and communications network in the UK. In 1939 the first code-breakers began moving in.
Among this wealth of history, the architecture of this site can often be forgotten. This was originally going to be a country estate, and nothing more. Who was to know that it would become such an influential place of knowledge, and history and eventually become the main factor in winning the war?
The land was formerly a part of the Manor of Eaton. The main mansion itself is a great example of Victorian architecture, with a multitude of bay windows and designs in the walls created by the placement of different coloured bricks. The style of the buildings on the estate as a whole ranges between a mix of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque. The architecture was often commented upon by anyone who worked there or any visitors to the site.
It is still a place which triggers feelings of immense awe, even today it is preserved and visitors are welcome to delve into the history which is held there. There is even talk of the buildings which surround the mansion being renovated to their former wartime state so that you can get a real feeling of what it was like to work there in those times.
There was a style of architecture which was beginning to emerge before the war, called ‘the international style’. This is the style in which the outhouses surrounding the mansion were thought to have been built-in, even if they were built quickly to house the different departments of the code-breakers. The architects who were drafted in to design these buildings may have been working on this style around the time the war began, but there is a certain irony that the war brought about. This style was supposed to be based upon the creation of a ‘new world’ envisioned by people all over the world, a world without borders or barriers after World War 1. But with world war two came the end of that vision in a sense. Barriers, borders and metal fences need to be brought up rather quickly and thus before it had even really begun, the international style movement was brought to a halt.
We will write more about the international style another time.
Written by Jade Turney – Building Tectonics Ltd.