Bletchley Park is located about 50 miles from London, in Milton Keynes and was the central site of the United Kingdom Government Code and Cypher School. It played an important part in breaking the secret codes and the Enigma ciphers of the Axis Powers.
The official historian of World War II British Intelligence has stated that the 'ultra' intelligence produced at Bletchley played a key role in shorting the war by two to four years and that without it, the outcome of the war would have been uncertain.
Bletchley Park was first created by Samuel Lipscomb Seckham in 1877. It was sold to Sir Herbert Samuel Leon in 1883, who then expanded and modified the then existing farmhouse into the present 'maudlin and monstrous pile' by combining various styles including Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque into the mansion seen today.
The mansion was bought in 1938 by a builder, who planned to put new homes on the site. In may of that year Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as SIS or MI6 bought the mansion and 58 acres of land for its use in the event of war.
One of the advantaged of using this site, was its location to London and its centralised location with access to the Bletchley railway station. This rail line, a link between Cambridge and Oxford, met with the main West Coast railway line linking London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Bletchley Park is now open as an educational, historical attraction and memorial and celebrating the accomplishments of Alan Turing and the many thousands who worked on the project during the war.