Outings

September 2023 visit to Grade 1 listed Marble Hill House in the Thames-side grounds of Marble Hill Park in Twickenham.

June 2023 visit to Battersea Power Station, including a trip up Lift 109 for 360-degree views of the surrounding area.

September 2022 visit to the London Transport Museum in Acton, including the London Transport Miniature Railway.

32 members and guests visited Bletchley Park, home of the Allied code breakers during WW II, on Tuesday 22 May 2018. The site has been recently refurbished and renovated to preserve the heritage for future generations. In the Second World War it housed the Government Code and Cypher School which regularly decoded the secret communications of the Axis powers, the most important of which were the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.

The naval, military and air sections were on the ground floor of the Mansion and the top floor was allocated to MI6. Construction of the wooden huts was begun in 1939 with non-naval enigma messages being deciphered in Hut 6 and translation, indexing and cross referencing in Hut 3.

Naval Enigma messages were originally deciphered in Hut 8 and then translated in Hut 4. Within a short time 12 further huts were added as the work expanded and became more specialized including Hut 2 which was used for beer, teas and general relaxation. Initially there was a wireless room in the Mansion but this was moved to nearby Whaddon Hall.

The Enigma coding machine had been developed in the late 1920s by a German engineer and its military potential was soon recognized. Shortly before the outbreak of the war the Polish Cypher Bureau based in Warsaw broke the Enigma Code and, with the invasion of Poland imminent, the information and techniques were passed to the British. The bombe, designed by Alan Turing was a bank of early computers designed to uncover some of the increasingly complex daily settings of the Enigma machine used by the various German military networks and the Luftwaffe.

At its peak the code breakers at Bletchley were reading 4,000 messages a day sent in by a chain of wireless intercept stations. The communications of the German Navy proved more difficult to read as they had much tighter procedures after the introduction of the four rotor Enigma. Their communications could only be deciphered after the successful launch of the US Navy bombe which continued operating for the rest of the war. Most of the material which had been recorded and passed on to Bletchley by motorcycle or teleprinter was deciphered in Block D, a maze of corridors and windowless room.

The Lorenz system was used for high level messages between German High Command and field commanders. However, operator errors crept in which helped those at Bletchley to work out the logical structures of the German machines. Automatic machinery was constructed to help with the decryption which led to the construction of Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer which could be programmed. This was designed and built by Tommy Flowers and his team and was delivered to Bletchley where it was further developed.

After the messages had been analysed the contents were sent on to the relevant organisations or commanders in the field as intelligence reports.

After the war the secrecy imposed on the Bletchley staff remained in force although some leaks were inevitable and most of the Park over time became a conservation area. Eventually The Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum, refurbishing the exteriors of some of the huts and to make it a tourist attraction. It now has a large visitor centre and has a major educational component catering for school parties.

The party of members and guests met our guide Jill in the shade of the oldest Wisteria in the country which was brought over to England in 1816 from China and was planted next to the then head brewer’s cottage and which is now the general office.

That plant set the tone of the visit as beer has been brewed on Fuller’s historic Griffin Brewery site since the sixteenth century. The first recorded use of the name Griffin Brewery in Chiswick dates from 1816 when one of the owners of the company at the time acquired the name from the failed brewery Meux and Reid in Clerkenwell. Further financial misfortunes befell the company until John Bird Fuller was approached for financial assistance and took full control of it in 1845 – the “Founding Date”. Eventually his son joined the partnership which was later dissolved and finally the now well established business was formed in 1929 when Smith and Turner came on board and it became a Limited Company.

The company operates over 380 pubs, inns and hotels across the south of England and is the last remaining family brewers in London. It is on this site in Chiswick that all Fuller’s Beers are produced. Integral to the building is the Quality Assurance Department which has strictly limited access.

The tour continued up staircases to half floors and along walkways through narrow arches past bronze coppers and wooden casks and the brewing equipment of yesteryear which is lovingly preserved.

All this is interspersed with modern stainless steel coppers which are computer controlled complete with gauges and protected windows for observing the contents and a network of outflowing pipes of varying diameters. Nevertheless the traditional methods and techniques of brewing are carefully observed.

It is in these vessels that some of Fuller’s leading brands of beer including ESB, London Pride, Golden Pride and Chiswick Bitter are produced. These multiple brews are made from the same batch of malt and barley which go through various processes which include heat treatment to different temperatures and fermentation and then blending the varying strengths of liquid run offs which are sugary. Yeast, of which only one strain is used for all Fuller’s Beers, is added to convert sugar to alcohol. The stronger Golden Pride has the highest alcoholic content [8.5% by volume], Chiswick Bitter has the lowest with 3.5% and ESB [5.0%] and London Pride [4.1%] fall in between.

Descending to ground level we came across the stacks of kegs, casks and bottles ready for placing on the conveyer belts and thence from the fork trucks on to the fleet of covered lorries and vans ready to distribute the various products to those many awaiting.

We then retired to the Hock Cellar where our guide welcomed us to the much anticipated beer tasting and where members of the party could put their new knowledge to the test. The cellar also functions as a museum.

The memorable tour had been packed full of interest and had been excellently conducted by Jill Ridgeon and well organised by David Mayne.

We returned to the Mawson Arms for lunch.

Photographs by Michael Horner