Google donates £550,000 to restore Bletchley Park sheds

Bletchley Park Trust is significantly closer to raising match funding needed to unlock Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £4.6 million for the restoration of WW2 Codebreaking Huts, says the Park Trust. Google, has announced a donation of £550,000 towards the match funding needed to embark on the first stage of a £15 million project to transform the site into a world-class heritage and education centre.

Google’s backing draws the Bletchley Park Trust nearer to its goal of developing the site, both to educate and inspire generations to come and as a permanent testament to the brilliant people who worked there. Once the remaining funding is in place the Trust will get underway with the restoration of iconic codebreaking huts 1, 3 and 6 and create a world-class visitor centre and exhibition in the currently derelict Block C. This development will not only conserve buildings of highly-significant heritage value and but also considerably improve the educational offering and visitor experience at Bletchley Park.

Peter Barron, Director of External Relations for Google, said: "The Bletchley Park Trust has been doing great work to honour Alan Turing and the codebreakers who helped shorten the second world war and to educate the next generation about the history of modern computing. We are delighted to make this charitable donation to help support the next phase of this important project"

Simon Greenish, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust, said: “We are tremendously grateful to Google for bringing us considerably closer to achieving our development aims. We have received other generous contributions towards the project but this is the largest single element of the partnership funding and absolutely vital in potentially getting the project underway much sooner than might otherwise have been the case. It would be wonderful if other donors follow Google’s example to help preserve our computing heritage. We could then proceed as soon as possible with restoration of the profoundly historically significant codebreaking huts.”

The Heritage Lottery Fund announced a £4.6 million grant for the Bletchley Park Trust in October. It is a pre-condition that in order to draw down the funding to commence the current stage of the £15 million project, the Trust must have raised the match funding required to complete the package. In addition to the Google grant and a number of other awards from Trusts and Foundations, individuals are also supporting the Trust’s ‘Action This Day!’ campaign to help raise the match funding. To donate please go to www.bletchleypark.org.uk
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