Tag: museum

History, museum, Naval, WW2

Bletchley Park home of the codebreakers.

A great trip to Bletchley park home of the codebreakers. Its been ten years or so since our last visit and was pleasantly surprised they has spent a lot of money on the place. Entry fee is £21 for an Adult but we had some free tickets that where given to us by a friend. you will find some great exhibits and its all explained in great detail for you. How it all worked and how the germans never discovered it is amazing for so many people played a part in the cracking of the code thus saving many many lives and shortening the war. make sure you give it a visit you will not be disappointed.

From Wikipedia

Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following 1883 for the financier and politician Sir Herbert Leon in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles, on the site of older buildings of the same name.

During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers; among its most notable early personnel the GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work there was secret until many years after the war.

According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the “Ultra” intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain.[1] The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital electronic computer.[a] Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid-1970s.

After the war, the Post Office took over the site and used it as a management school, but by 1990 the huts in which the codebreakers worked were being considered for demolition and redevelopment. The Bletchley Park Trust was formed in February 1992 to save large portions of the site from development.

More recently, Bletchley Park has been open to the public and houses interpretive exhibits and rebuilt huts as they would have appeared during their wartime operations. It receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.[2] The separate National Museum of Computing, which includes a working replica Bombe machine and a rebuilt Colossus computer, is housed in Block H on the site.

History, museum

Chiltern open Air Museum

We had a week off work but didn’t go away so instead decided to have a few days out. The weather was gorgeous so we set off to have a trip to the open air museum. We had visited here before many years ago with Kay and Stuart and thought we would have another look. The admission was £9.50 each and parking was free. The museum is full of saved local buildings such as houses and farm buildings, my favourite building there was a pre-fab house which you can go into and have a look around, these must have seemed like luxury, although small, coming from the bombed out buildings after the war. There is also a small chapel and a newly constructed Iron Age round house. We enjoyed a cream tea while we were there and a walk round the woodland path. It was a pleasant day although there wasn’t as much there as I thought

From Wiki:

The museum was founded in 1976 and aims to rescue and restore common English buildings from the Chilterns, which might otherwise have been destroyed or demolished. The buildings have been relocated to the museum’s 45-acre (180,000 m2) site, which includes woodland and parkland. The collection has more than 30 buildings on view including barns, other traditional farm buildings and houses.

Buildings of interest include a 1940s prefab from Amersham, a reconstruction of an Iron Age house, a Victorian toll house from High Wycombe, a “Tin Chapel” from Henton, Oxfordshire and a forge from Garston, Hertfordshire. A fine pair of cottages from 57 Compton Avenue at Leagrave, near Luton which started out as a weather-boarded thatched barn with central double doors in the early 18th century. In the late 18th century the barn was converted into two labourers’ cottages.

 

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Chiltern Open Air Museum

 

History, museum

Milestone Museum Hampshire Cultural Trust

We saw this on a TV program and it looked interesting enough for us to travel nearly 2 hours to have a look. The museum is located near to Basingstoke Hampshire and first opened on the 1st December 2000. The building is very modern and all the exhibits are under 1 roof with easy access to all the displays. Inside the setup is very Victorian in style and you will find a Victorian Public House, Railway Station, Ironmonger, and terraced houses. There is a Toy shop and sweet shop where you can get some sweets they had in the 40’s still under ration. There is also large collections of things of yesteryear including Video recorders, TV’s, Vacuums and even an old Twin Tub . Many Steam engines and stored inside and old pumps and things from old Iron Foundry etc. A great day out and only £12 each to get in and this covers you all year if you are back down in this location.

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History

Milton Keynes museum formerly Stacey Hill

40’s weekend

Another trip to the excellent Milton Keynes museum at Stacey bushes and this time it had a 40’s weekend. Due to parking limitations we had to park at Wolverton health centre however they did ferry us to the venue on a 1930,s bus. Once inside the museum there were loads of displays from old ww2 home guard tents, old cars from the 40,s and some old motorcycles. The best display was a working spitfire that you could sit in the cockpit for

£10 a throw, every so often he started the merlin engine up and the sound was incredible. I Will definitely visit this again as it made a good afternoon out.