Shepley × Bletchley Park

Have you ever watched The Imitation Game? We recently discovered that Shepley has not one, but two remarkable connections to the secret world of Bletchley Park.

Judith Sherratt

Judith joined the Wrens in 1944 and served in Special Duties (X) at Bletchley Park, before volunteering for service in Sri Lanka. There she discovered that her brother Andrew, serving in the RAF, had been involved in the same intelligence work. Neither had been allowed to tell the other what they were doing. They ended up working seven rooms apart in Colombo.

Marjorie Bull

Marjorie Bull (née Biltcliffe) grew up above Dungeon Bottom and served with the WAAF at RAF Chicksands, intercepting coded enemy communications which were passed into the Bletchley Park intelligence operation. She eventually returned home to Shepley in the 1980s.

Finally able to talk

For decades, neither woman could talk freely about what they had done. But when the restrictions were lifted, Judith went looking for the other women and in 1978 she used the newspapers to trace them and organised a reunion. She wanted them to finally discover “…just how their bit contributed to the outcome of the war.”

Meanwhile, the 1970s journalist introducing Judith’s extraordinary story decided to explain that women’s secrets were usually “Who’s pregnant again?” “How to make those special meringues.” We’ll leave you to make your own mind up about that one.

Did they ever meet?

What we’d love to know is whether Judith and Marjorie ever met. By the late 1980s, both of these former secret wartime workers were living in Shepley. Does anybody remember them?

Tell us what you remember. Please say whether we may share your story, photographs, both, or neither, and identify anything you want kept private.

Judith Sherratt research: newspaper archive material via Findmypast. Marjorie Bull: Shepley Magazine, 2024.