During the pandemic and the half-day Fridays, which I desperately miss, I walked around the local area a lot. This was the perfect time for me to get some much-needed exercise and was essential to my mental health. On one of those walks, I discovered Pembroke Park, which is located between Ruislip Manor and Eastcote. I noticed a memorial sign outside of the housing estate and walked over to have a look. That allowed me to uncover this important site. It was the location of a very important school that was essential to breaking enemy codes in World War II. Pembroke Park (which was also known as RAP Lime Grove or Outstation Eastcote) appeared as the setting in the film "The Imitation Game", which covered Alan Turing's contributions to cracking the codes.
The site was originally built as a hospital, but it was not needed and used for a different purpose. Pembroke Park operated during World War II as the Government Code and Cipher School for Bletchley Park and helped break the enemy codes. It was home to 800 Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service personnel), and they worked on the decoding machines along with around one hundred RAF technicians. (There were also some Americans stationed here with their own decoding machines.) It was the headquarters of Government Communications, and it moved to Cheltenham in the 1950s, although a smaller unit did stay until the 1970s.
The land is now a housing estate, and it was sold in 2007. The development completed in 2014. The roads in the housing estate pay respect to the history of this estate during its conributions to the war.
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