Recognising Bletchley Park's unsung heroines

As the home to the Government Code and Cipher School, which later became the government's intelligence arm, GCHQ, Bletchley Park was the headquarters of Britain's codebreaking efforts.

Bletchley Park also operated five outposts, where many of the codebreaking machines — and, therefore, women — were based. When a message was intercepted by one of the outposts, it was sent by motorcycle courier or teleprinter to Bletchley Park to be collated with all the other intelligence.

The work at Station X was carried out in secret; employees were instructed not to tell even their family that they worked there. The first female recruits were brought in as an experiment — senior figures in the establishment doubted they could do the work.

Many of the women who worked at Bletchley Park had been Wrens — that is, they had worked for the Women's Royal Naval Service — and many reported their disappointment when they found out quite how far away from the sea they had been located. Other female recruits came from the Women's Royal Auxiliary Air Force and the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Some were as young as 15 and most were poorly paid. Weekly income totalled just 13 shillings and sixpence for the youngest women — one-fifth of the national average pay.

Few of the women designed or maintained the codebreaking machines; instead, they typically worked as radio operators, Morse-code readers or teleprinter typists. On occasion, they operated the codebreaking machines and played a key part in cracking the codes sent from the German Enigma machines.

Credit: Conrad Taylor