Bletchley Park, the centre of British attempts to crack Nazi codes during the second World War, is now a semi-derelict museum without state funding, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

WINSTON CHURCHILL called them his treasured “geese that laid the golden eggs – but never cackled”.

The “geese” were the thousands of sworn-to-silence workers at Bletchley Park, a 19th century country mansion and grounds that became the centre of Britain’s attempt to crack the notoriously difficult-to-decipher coded messages from the Nazis’ Enigma machines.

Bletchley’s success at doing so is credited by historians with shortening the second World War by two years. The effort kick-started the computer era in Britain with the building of Colossus, a candidate for the world’s first working digital computer.

But for three decades after the war, Bletchley’s role, and that of its workers – mostly women, but who included a young Ian Fleming working for the man who would be the model for “M” in the James Bond novels – remained top secret. Since then it has captured the imagination of historians, and become the stuff of movies (Enigma in 2001) and novels (geek favourite Cryptonomicon, by Neil Stephenson).

Yet the richly historic Bletchley Park complex, now a semi-restored museum site in Milton Keynes operated by a trust, still has little state recognition in Britain and no state funding.

Director of museum collections Kelsey Griffin says that, financially, the park is on “a knife-edge, to say the least”. Its slowly increasing profile – much of it due to affectionate support from technology enthusiasts spreading the word on Twitter, blogs and other social media tools – means Bletchley can meet its operating costs through visitor admissions.

Yet with many of the war-era concrete “huts” on the grounds still boarded up and weed-enshrouded, and with exhibits assembled – if charmingly – from laminated posters and Blu-Tack, Griffin would like to see the site properly developed and restored.

At the moment, visitors wander through restored huts which house exhibits on code-breaking and code-breakers, plus some idiosyncratic collections – of model ships, vintage cars, war-era toys, old computers (a start on a National Museum of Computing), and a massive assemblage of Churchill memorabilia.

The most exciting exhibits are those on the code-breaking effort, which include two working rebuilds of original machines – Colossus itself and a “bombe”, an electronic machine that helped code-breakers narrow in on Enigma’s potential settings each day.

“It took two dedicated teams of enthusiasts about 14 years to do the rebuilds from old black and white photos and some circuit drawings,” says Griffin.

Some original parts were restored and went into the rebuilds, but others, such as a huge number of complex barrel-shaped parts in the bombe, were hand-cast and finished by volunteers.

But weren’t the top secret drawings supposed to have been destroyed? “Well, yes. However, engineers – you know what they’re like. These were incredible works of engineering.”

Griffin says that huge support for the campaign to preserve the site has come from technologists. Many of the tech crowd know of Bletchley because it figures centrally in Cryptonomicon (“That book has done us an enormous amount of good PR-wise”). Others are fascinated with its codebreaking legacy and computer heritage. “The geek audience has almost adopted Bletchley Park as a geek mecca. It’s the spiritual home of geekiness, if you will.”

Self-described geek supporters have even set up a monthly “Station X” event (Station X was one of Bletchley’s wartime names) during which they get a special tour and are encouraged to video or take pictures and then post them to Flickr.com’s image-sharing site.

Griffin says the unusual decision of the museum to encourage rather than limit or ban recordings, videos and picture-taking has boosted Bletchley’s profile on the internet.

She hopes all of this will help Bletchley in its attempt to secure national rather than local funding – £6 million (€6.97 million) in heritage funds which could allow them to restore the remaining buildings and upgrade exhibits to a contemporary standard. They need to raise £1.2 million of matching funds, and have met about half of that.

“We’d like to develop Bletchley into the world-class heritage site it deserves to be, given its wartime significance, and honour those who worked here,” says Griffin.