A building that housed mechanical equipment used by World War II code-breakers has been given Grade II listed status by the UK government.
Block C at Bletchley Park housed mechanical card-indexing machines used in cracking high level German Enigma codes.
Photo credit: Bletchley Park Trust
The building and its operation was “vital to the success of Bletchley Park”, tourism and heritage minister John Penrose said in a statement on Friday.
“The work that took place at Bletchley Park was absolutely key to the Allied victory in World War II,” Penrose said. “The site also had a huge role in the start of the information age, with the development of machinery for mass data processing and can be viewed as the birthplace of modern information technology.”
Block C housed Hollerith tabulating machines that were used to index and cross-reference deciphered messages, Bletchley Park Trust director Simon Greenish told ZDNet UK on Monday.
“It’s fair to say that Block C was the database for Bletchley Park,” said Greenish. “It had a mechanical retrieval system that would fish out individual cards.”
Bletchley Park generated millions of cards to index and cross-reference deciphered messages, with data such as who sent the message, where it came from, and any unusual words, said Greenish.
Block C will be renovated to become a new visitor centre for Bletchley Park, using around £1.5m from funds awarded by the National Lottery.
“This is where the large part of the money from the [£4.6m] lottery grant will go,” said Greenish.
Listing places restrictions on alterations to the original structure of a building. Many buildings at Bletchley Park have listed status. Block C will be restored to its 1940s open-plan design.
Bletchley Park still needs to raise “a few hundred thousand” to unlock the lottery grant, said Greenish. Search and advertising company Google donated £550,000 in December as part of efforts to unlock the grant.
“We are very close [to unlocking the funds], but we are not quite there yet,” said Greenish.
The government gave Block C listed status following advice by non-departmental public body English Heritage. Buildings must be at least 30 years old to be listed. Modern buildings have to have great historical or architectural importance to be put forward by English Heritage to the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) for listing.