December 2023

Swindon’s Secret Code Breaker – a new one one on me. So thanks to Matthew Pearce for sending me this article about Swindonian Mary Ratcliffe who worked with the famous code breaker, Alan Turing. Just when you think you’ve heard of all the characters and interesting people that have emanated from this town – either as Swindonians or Born Again Swindonians like me, along comes something/someone to surprise me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Swindon is so surprising! And, it’s arguable, the centre of the universe. So Mary Ratcliffe is a welcome addition to the Sons and Daughters of Swindon section of this blog.

Mary died in Swindon on November 29th 2023 aged 98.

As the article points out, Mary Ratcliffe worked at a secret code breaking base in Middlesex. There she helped to decipher coded messages intercepted from the Nazis. She decoded messages encrypted by German Enigma machines using Bombe machines invented by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park.

The main base for codebreaking was of course at the famous Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes. But Mary’s site in Eastcote was one of several others established to ensure that if one was bombed or sabotaged, the rest would still be operational.

A Swindon fixture

I posted the aforementioned article on Facebook and the post got a great number of responses from people who knew her from her community stuff and appearances as Queen Victoria at fetes etc. She was a familiar face across the town thanks to her willingness to support good causes in royal guise.

Her family recounts how she took great pride in her work yet spoke little of it. That being down to the secrecy that surrounded her war work.

Pride of Swindon

In 2008, Mrs Ratcliffe then became one of the first-ever recipients of the Pride of Swindon award for her work doing soup runs for the homeless with the Simon Community, and her campaigns for various social causes.

In tribute, her family said of her: ‘Whether as Mary or Queen Victoria, she championed underdogs with eloquent ferocity and actively supported humanitarian causes ranging from elder abuse to homelessness. he tackled grave issues, where others feared to tread and as such was always true to herself.’

Wartime Exploits

Do also see this Swindon Advertiser piece from 2014: https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/11601201.new-film-lifts-lid-on-codebreakers-role-in-history/

In it Mary tells them: ‘Joining the Women’s Royal Naval Service at 19 was a defining moment for me.’
‘At the Mill Hill recruiting station in North London I was interviewed and assigned to a base.’  ‘I wasn’t told where I was going, or the nature of the work I would be doing. They bundled us into an Army lorry and pulled the flap down. Our “secret” destination was Eastcote, in Middlesex …

… Our vow of silence was absolute. We weren’t allowed to discuss our work with anybody. Nor were we allowed to wear a category badge. If asked, we had to say we were recruits, which, of course, would not stimulate any further interest. The 30 years vow of silence was sacrosanct, even after the end of the war.’

Photos below courtesy of Robert Slade