On Monday 27 March 2023, the children in Year 2 were visited by Andrew Fryer, a volunteer from Bletchley Park.

They were given a virtual tour of Bletchley Park to learn what the site was used for and the type of work that would have taken place. The children would love to tell you all about it, but they have to keep it a secret!

They can however share with you that they learnt how to decode different secret messages using pictures, the alphabet and even sound! The Morse code was very difficult to cypher, as it was very quick; there were many patterns to remember.

The children went on to learn about Alan Turing and his success in cracking codes using the Enigma Machine. Andrew showed the children how the Enigma Machine works with lots of different ways of changing the codes so that messages could not be decoded easily.

At the end of the session, they saw how the letters pressed made a different letter light up and the children got to type a letter themselves. They learnt a lot of information from Andrew about life in 1942 and they are now trained code breakers! The children were kindly given a guidebook to take home as well.

V –

“I liked it when Andrew put on different voices to be Mr Grimsby, the landlord. It was very funny!”

R  –

“I found it very funny that the toilets were in the shed!”

R – 

“I enjoyed becoming a code breaker.”

K –

“Using a Caesar wheel to crack the code was very difficult.”

R –

“I really liked the Enigma Machine – it was like magic! When you pressed one button, another one lit up!”