Joan Clarke, of Rosendale Road and Bletchley Park

We have a new local heroine to celebrate. In our last Newsletter we featured William Brown and now want to share the story of Joan Clarke. She was a long-serving and distinguished member of Hut 8 at Bletchley Park from 1939-1946. Born in June, 1917 at Rosendale Road (where a Blue Plaque was unveiled in 2024) and baptised at All Saints, she attended Dulwich High School for Girls (now Rosemead), then James Alleyn’s in Dulwich before being accepted at Newnham College, Cambridge where she gained a double-first in mathematics. She had to wait until 1948 to be awarded her degree, when women were finally allowed to claim them.

While at university she met Alan Turing who arranged for her to be offered "interesting work” for the Government Code & Cipher School (GC&CS, the fore-runner to GCHQ) at Bletchley Park. There, in Hut 8 she worked with Turing on deciphering codes used by the German Navy, working with the now famous Enigma machine. She was paid a princely £2 per week for working around the clock in 3 shifts.

Promoted to Deputy Head of her team, she went on to develop a close relationship with Turing but was still rather taken aback when he proposed to her. They were engaged for a while but he did warn her of his homosexuality and the engagement was later broken off, although they remained close friends.

Following VE Day she remained on the GC&CS staff and in 1946 was awarded an MBE. She transferred to RAF Eastcote at Hillingdon, where she continued with decoding work, this time between Russian agents for the now-renamed GCHQ. While there she met her husband, a work colleague, and they moved to Scotland. She may have continued to work clandestinely for GCHQ, as in 1962, the couple were invited to return officially to the relocated centre at Cheltenham. She retired in 1977 but continued in a clerical capacity for a further 5 years, leaving finally in 1982.

Bletchley Park was shrouded in secrecy until as late as 1996, when the full story of the Centre and the role of the Colossus computer was finally revealed. That same year Joan died aged 79, taking her secrets with her, as she was still subject to the Official Secrets Act.