Join in the family fun at Bletchley Park on Sunday 30 and Monday 31 May for its annual Bank Holiday ‘Forties Family Festival’, celebrating 65 years since VE Day. In 2009 the event attracted around 2000 visitors and over 200 World War Two re-enactors, and had Bletchley Park teeming with activity, so the 2010 event has been extended and will take place over two days, with even more re-enactors due to take part and lots more activities for the whole family.
The two day event will feature a range of wartime displays and re-enactment groups, Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Flypasts featuring a Lancaster and a Dakota* and entertaining lectures about life at Bletchley Park and elsewhere during the war.
Re-enactment group, ‘Deco in Style’, will recreate a World War Two command centre plotting table and Sittingbourne Home Front Living History Group will have a display recreating a bombed out London scene, complete with a wartime rest centre and Military Police mobile checkpoint. There will be a display of vintage vehicles and bicycles from 1920 to 1940 and on the musical front, Steven Brown’s Musical Melodies will perform classic songs from the 1940’s, while the Lindyhoppers will demonstrate their dancing talents at the 1940’s disco.
Meanwhile, a selection of evocative wartime cinema reels will be showing in Bletchley Park’s wartime Enigma cinema and visitors can take part in a craft workshop and have a go at making a wartime toy. Weather conditions allowing, there will also be two rare opportunities to see a stunning display of World War Two airpower when the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight does a flypast in a Lancaster on Sunday 30 and a Dakota on Monday 31.
The event will also feature fascinating talks by Bletchley Park volunteers, such as Joan Draper, who will speak about life as a wartime evacuee.
Bletchley Park was home to the codebreakers of World War Two and the birthplace of the modern computer. Today it is a museum and heritage site, with a fascinating range of permanent exhibitions and private collections. Among other things, visitors will see the famous Abwehr Enigma Machine, the Lorenz and other mechanical cipher systems and the Bombe and Colossus Rebuilds.
The whole family will enjoy the Home Front exhibition; the Toys and Memorabilia Collection, with playthings and domestic artefacts from the 1930’s and 1940’s; the Maritime Display, Model Railway exhibition; and the various vintage vehicles, including two 1930's Austin’s featured in the film ‘The Eagle Has Landed’, a Talbot and 1938 Ambulance used in the film, ‘Enigma’. Other things to see include the Churchill Collection, which provides a unique glimpse into the spirit of the man who famously described the workers of Bletchley Park as “The geese that laid the golden eggs - but never cackled”; and the Bletchley Park Post Office, believed to have been an undercover mailroom during the war.
Bletchley Park is set in beautiful parkland with a Victorian Mansion, a lake, wildlife and a children’s play area. The restaurant in Hut 4, former home of the Naval codebreakers, serves a full range of meals and refreshments. The gift shop sells books, DVDs, CDs, gifts and toys. Bletchley Park is easily accessible by car from the A5 and J13 and J14 of the M1. On-site parking is £3 per car and Bletchley Station, which has direct services to London Euston and Birmingham New Street, is a five minute walk.
*All Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Flypasts are subject to weather conditions and aircraft service availability.
