Bletchley Park receives £1 million Facebook lifeline

The social network said its work wouldn’t have been possible without the legacy of the Buckinghamshire site
Benedict Cumberbatch played Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing in the 2014 film The Imitation Game

Facebook has donated £1 million to Bletchley Park after the charity and museum said the coronavirus pandemic had cut 95 per cent of its income.

The social network said it was pledging the money in recognition of the Buckinghamshire country’s house’s legacy as a birthplace of modern computing.

Bletchley Park was a World War Two base for codebreakers, who used the first large-scale digital computers to help decrypt communications from Nazi Germany.

Today, the Bletchley Park Trust is a registered charity, heritage attraction and independent museum which educates visitors on the site’s legacy and runs learning programmes around coding.

However, the Covid-19 lockdown forced it to close its doors for four months.

The loss in visitor numbers saw the trust report an expected £2 million deficit for the year.

Bletchley Park’s chief executive Iain Standen said Facebook’s donation would help preserve the park’s visitor experiences and learning programmes.

The donation comes alongside £447,000 in support from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Culture Recovery Fund.

“We are very grateful to both Facebook for their generous donation and DCMS for their financial support,” he said.

“Facebook’s donation highlights the ongoing legacy of pioneering technology developed here during World War Two.

“Whilst the Culture Recovery Fund demonstrates how vital it is to the nation to save heritage sites like Bletchley Park. With this significant support, we at Bletchley Park can weather the current crisis and survive into the future, keeping the doors open for future generations.”

Steve Hatch, Facebook’s vice president for northern Europe, said the social network’s own work on new technologies would not have been possible without Bletchley Park.

“The historic achievements of Alan Turing and the Bletchley team have benefited all of us greatly, including Facebook, and we’re thrilled to help preserve this spiritual home of modern computing,” he said.

“The UK is our biggest engineering hub outside of the US and responsible for building technologies to keep our community safe, for the future of work and commerce, and for the exciting world of VR and AR.

“This wouldn’t have been possible without the legacy of Alan Turing and his team and our hope is that Bletchley staying open inspires the next generation of engineers.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in