Precious images – The Enigma Cinema, Bletchley Park

Since we are celebrating ten years of the PPT having a base at Dean Clough, I thought it would be nice to look back at some pictures of Bletchley Park and the Enigma Cinema. The original idea of our move to Halifax was that the Bletchley Park Trustees wanted us out of D-Block, where we stored the exhibits that were not on display. The ground rent we would be paying at Dean Clough was a fraction of anything we could find around Milton Keynes. We hoped that the Enigma Cinema could stay as it was at Bletchley, the jewel in the crown as far as the PPT were concerned.

However, it was not long before Bletchley decided that they wanted the area for another use. We looked at various other options on the site, but it became clear that they didn’t want us there at all. In fact, they had already given marching orders to several other independent museums on the site. We finally moved out of the Enigma Cinema by the end of 2015, after 13 years at Bletchley. For details of this last move, Peter Allen has an article in Rewind 149, available on our website.

Consequently I have selected a range of pictures which not only show the cinema off, (I don’t think we’ll ever be able to create what we had there again) but also some of our past members as well as current ones. Image 1 shows the very well equipped projection room, with 2 showing the proscenium and tabs, and then 3 and 4 show a full house for an AGM with the committee sat at the front.