Google kicks off Bletchley Park fundraising drive

Google has started fundraising to save the derelict Block C at Bletchley Park, the site where British codebreaking helped shorten World War II.

Block C had once been home the complex's punched card index — "in essence, the search engine at the heart of Bletchley Park's decryption activity", Google EMEA external relations chief Peter Barron said in a blog post on Friday — and the search giant has now teamed up with the Bletchley Park Trust to help fund its rebuilding.

"Today, Block C is derelict. We hope to help restore it to serve as a visitor and learning centre for both Bletchley Park and the UK's National Museum of Computing," Barron wrote.

Google has already played a part at Bletchley, having been the contributor of $100,000 (around £62,000 at the time) that was used to help secure the papers of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and seminal computer scientist who worked at Bletchley Park, for the site.

The new fundraising drive began with a Google-sponsored garden party on Thursday, which raised more than £10,000. Google is also urging people to donate via the Bletchley Park website. The last major funding boosts received by Bletchley were in March 2010, when the government awarded it £250,000 for repairs, and £460,000 of lottery funding in September 2009.

Also on Thursday, Google sent a Street View trike around the site, in order to map the exterior of the historic computing facility. From the war until the 1970s, the public had not even been allowed to know of the site's significance, let alone be given a tour of the grounds.

In mid-July, the Queen unveiled a memorial at Bletchley, honouring the work of those whose codebreaking work had helped bring World War II to an end.