BLETCHLEY PARK VISITOR NUMBERS SMASH 200,000!
Bletchley Park is proving that it is not a secret anymore as it has smashed its previous year’s visitor number by welcoming its 200,000th visitor so far this year.
In 2014 196,000 people visited the site where codebreakers worked during World War II, amid total secrecy.
Visitor numbers so far this year (2015) are 61 per cent higher.
With the blockbuster Hollywood film the Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch no doubt has played its part in driving up the visitor numbers.
One of the most secure of Nazis cypher machines at Bletchely Park
As a visitor attraction its very easy to reach from London with just as 30minute train ride to Bletchley that will literally drop you within 200metres of the main museum entrance!
The 200,000th visitor to the former secret base was the Collings family from Winchester, Hampshire.
They were paying their first ever visit to Bletchley Park. Dad Jason, Mum Katherine and their daughters Josephine, 16, Miranda, 13 and nine-year old Charlotte were given free one-year passes to Bletchley Park along with a guidebook and a teddy bear.
The 200,000 visitors to Bletchley Park in 2015.
Jason, who’s read several books on the code breaking work carried out at this unassuming Buckinghamshire country estate during World War Two, said watching the film, The Imitation Game, had given them the nudge to come for a day out.
Jason said “We want our children to have an awareness of how important this place was to us 70 years ago.”
The Duchess of Cambridge who visited Bletchley Park
Incidentally the bear given to the Collings was similar to the ones sent to HRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to congratulate them on the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
“Bletchley Park is now firmly installed in the public consciousness as a fascinating place to learn about a once-secret story of World War Two code breaking. It is now, thanks to a great deal of hard work by hundreds, if not thousands, of people over a long period of time, a fantastic day out. Visitor income allows the Bletchley Park Trust to fulfil its mission to not only preserve this uniquely historic site but also to tell this amazing story to generations to come.” Said Kelsey Griffin, Bletchley Park’s Marketing and Communications Director.
