Peter Wescombe - obituary

17 Dec 2014

Peter Wescombe - obituary
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Peter Wescombe was a diplomat who helped to save Bletchley Park from being 
developed into a housing estate

Peter Wescombe, who has died aged 82, was a diplomat, amateur 
archaeologist and – later in life – a driving force behind the Bletchley 
Park Trust, which saved the Second World War code-breaking establishment 
from being demolished and turned into a housing estate.

In 1991 Bletchley Park, conveniently located near a railway station and 
set in 55 acres of land, was thought to be worth (with planning 
permission) more than £3 million. When a plan was conceived to redevelop 
the site, Wescombe (who had had a house at Bletchley since 1960) joined 
forces with Dr Peter Jarvis, a retired GP, calling an impromptu meeting of 
the Bletchley Archaeological & Historical Society.

He later remembered : “Peter Jarvis and I walked despondently out of a 
council meeting, where, despite our pleading, it had been decided that 
Bletchley Park should be demolished to make way for 300-plus houses, a 
petrol station and a small supermarket. In May my wife, Rowena, and I met 
with Peter and his wife, Sue, at his house… to put forward an idea. We 
would ask BT, who owned the Park, if we could hold a 'farewell reunion’ on 
the site for the wartime code breaking staff simply to say 'Thank you’ for 
their magnificent achievements. They agreed.”

As Wescombe admitted, however, they “were not being exactly honest”: the 
idea was to invite the media to the meeting to publicise a campaign to 
save Bletchley for the nation.

“From then on,” Wescombe said in January 2014, “it was simply uphill all 
the way. I now often just stand and look, sometimes in disbelief, at the 
old, sad wartime huts gleaming in their coats of fresh paint, the grounds 
being restored to their wartime layout; B Block standing high and proud; 
groups of visitors and schoolchildren listening intently to guides telling 
the BP story; and everywhere staff and volunteers hurrying about their 
business. And I think to myself, 'Wescombe, we actually made it.../snip/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11299648/Peter-Wescombe-obituary.html

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