BPMA acquires Bletchley Park undercover address mail for its postal collections

The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) is delighted to announce a new acquisition to its postal collections - six covers from the Bletchley Park undercover address mail. A grant from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant will be used to cover part of the cost of this acquisition.

Bletchley Park was home to the code breakers of the Second World War and their efforts to break the secret of the infamous Enigma machine. The Enigma machine was the backbone of German military and intelligence communications at the time. The work undertaken at Bletchley Park was so secret that undercover addresses had to be employed for mail to, and from, those who worked there.

The decoding of German signals is also interesting from a postal viewpoint because it was Post Office engineers who built Colossus - the first electronic computer. Colossus was developed by Tommy Flowers, a brilliant researcher and engineer for the Telecommunications branch of the GPO.

Apart from one picture of the Colossus computer, the BPMA has no evidence or illustrations in the collection of this important aspect of postal activity during the War. And until now, the collections did not contain any examples of mail sent to undercover addresses.

Douglas Muir, Curator of Philately at the BPMA said: 'This batch of covers illustrates the process perfectly and can now be used in any exhibition to do with the Post Office at War or the difficulty of communications by civilians in that situation. It fills an important gap in our collections of postal history.'

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