The Post Office 
The outstanding philanthropic support given by The Post Office Remembrance Fellowship to Bletchley Park Trust has been recognised in the naming of its new, state-of-the-art, 250 seat presentation and event space, as The Fellowship Auditorium.
The Bletchley Park Trust and PORF wish to recognise the vital contribution made by the team at the Post Office Research Station and the wider GPO to Bletchley Park’s wartime work. The GPO, now BT, had close links with Bletchley Park codebreakers, including providing the all-important telecommunication networks that allowed traffic in and out of the site.
A 135 m2 event space next to the auditorium is named The Radley Room, recognising Gordon Radley, the Controller of the Research Brand at the GPO from 1939 and throughout WW2. Radley’s team at Dollis Hill in north London designed and built codebreaking machines for Bletchley Park, including Tunny and Colossus – the world’s first large-scale programmable digital computer, as well as attachments for the Bombe machines.
Located in Block E, a historic wartime building that has been refurbished, redeveloped and opened to the public for the very first time, The Fellowship Auditorium sits alongside the Block E Learning Centre – which includes eight learning spaces able to accommodate learners from primary school pupils to students in higher education. Bletchley Park’s award-winning learning programme has been oversubscribed, but this new space will increase capacity and grow the programme, inspiring even more learners with the achievements of the Codebreakers and their relevance to today’s world.
PORF Trustees attended a celebratory Open Day on Thursday 19 October 2023 to explore the new spaces at the heart of the wartime site.
Further information about this exciting project can be found on Bletchley Park’s website here: https://bletchleypark.org.uk/bletchley-park-completes-redevelopment-project/