I was e-mailed by a lady from Washington concerning her father who was stationed at Hall Place during WW2 when the manor house was requisitioned to be used by the USA forces as the "ULTRA" code breaking radio interception centre, with information being sent to Station X an establishment that was not until very many years later discovered was our Bletchley Park "Enigma" decoding centre. The lady concerned was Barbara Stein her father being Joseph Stein who always related his experiences to his family of the affection he felt of the time he had spent stationed at Hall Place. Barbara Stein was trying to obtain further information on the ULTRA project that her father played a part in. Nobody at the time realised just how important their function was to play in the war effort.

I did some reseach on her behalf and discovered that this was a facinating part of the history of Hall Place and Bexleys history that seemed better remembered and documented in America than in England. This will be my extension of the Hall Place page to include "ULTRA" explaining the important function it played in WW2, I will attempt to redress the balance using information from the Local Studies Group and from the American wartime staff.

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THE STORY STARTS IN DECEMBER 1943

In December 1943 a section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps arrived in England on board the HMS Andes which must have been the rustiest and slowest ship afloat. The destination port of Liverpool was safely negotiated, where they were transfered to a staging area outside of Lichfield. The purpose was to bring over their Magic code breaking machines to work in conjunction with the British Enigma decoding machines based at Bletchley Park.

The whole USA Ultra contingent comprising 436 GIs was split into three sections the:-

6811th Security Section based at Hall Place were to intercept the incoming coded messages.

6812th Security Section based at Eastcote working with the WRNS on British Bombes.

6813th Security Section based in various sections at Bletchley Park.

Eventually after a few weeks in late January 1944 the 6811th Signal Corps boarded a train for the journey to Bexley and subsequently arriving at Hall Place. The 6811th Special Signals Detatchment "Santa Fe" was split into two shifts one would live in at Hall Place and the other would be housed at a large house to the south west end of the village. This shift had to be trucked to and from Hall Place. Initionally the troops to be billeted in the historic old manor house were delighted, but there were drawbacks, mostly the heating or lack of it in winter because of the fragile structure of the building it was forbidden to fire up the old fires places. The officers were more fortunate to be billeted a short distance away at the Black Prince a large pub with accommodation. The Black Prince has now been extensively extended and is now a member of the Holiday Inn Hotel Group.

The appearance of the manor house began to change as more and more aerials began to appear high on the roof of the building. As ordinary solders they had not yet been informed as to the exact tasks required of them at Hall Place, but shortly the GIs realised their purpose was to operate a radio reception station for the interception of coded messages from the Luftwaffe. The Great Hall was converted to the "Set Room" with rows of wooden tables each holding five Hallicrafters radio receivers used for intercepting the morse coded messages from the Germans. with above them lights hanging down from the rafters on very long cords. Along the passage from the Great Hall was the "Compilation of Records and Receipts" room, This was where the cryptographers were to began processsing the coded messsages. After checking the messages the urgent ones were passed to the traffic control desk box, less urgent to an other box. The control desk was a high sloping type, as one would see in a Dickens illustration. Out at the back of the old building Nissen huts were erected to house the showers, bathrooms and cookhouse. In the building that is now the Jacobean Barn restaurant was the site of the motor pool, mainly equipped with the redoubtable Jeeps.

HALL PLACE GOES OPERATIONAL ON 1st MARCH 1944

After a training period in which one group became the specialist radio operators. Their purpose was to listen and copy down the German morse code transmissions and translate them into letters and numbers. The other section were trained as cryptographers whose job was to process the messages from the radio operators. They all quickly learned that the most important thing in codebreaking was accuracy, a missed letter could turn the whole message into unintelligible rubbish. There were 40 operators on each shift, 20 operators were each assigned to a specific network of the Luffwaffe. The other 20 staff covered the networks for staff relief times, meals etc, also to allow for staff to have days off.

Reunion 2001

THE STORY WILL CONTINUE LATER

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I have recently received an email from Father Tom Stabile who was documenting the story behind the photographs he found taken by his deceased father, to further tell the story of some little known aspecks of his life during WW11 to the family. He found the internet a very useful tool for tracking down information, he came upon my site tracing the history of Bexley, Hall Place and subsequently the ULTRA Project. His father was Alphonse Stabile who passed away in 1994 but during WW11 he was stationed at Hall Place when it was used as a centre for tracking coded enemy radio signals which were then forwarding to, at the time, to an unknown centre for the decoding of the signals intercepted from the Germans. He formed part of the USA Army Signal Corps stationed at Hall Place whilst he was there he took five photographs that his son emailed to me which are displayed below.

1. The tower from the courtyard. 2. West wing of Hall Place, left side built in the XIII Century, right side in the XVI century. 3. The inner courtyard. 4. The West wing viewed from the front of the house. 5. The front of the house taken just inside the gates. ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN IN 1945 BY ALPHONSE STABILE.

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