The boring-looking London office building where UK spies operated for decades

Sandwiched between a pub and a Starbucks in Central London is an unremarkable office building with an incredible history. The boring-looking block on Palmer Street, just opposite St James’s Park Tube station, was the secret base of one of the country’s most important spy agencies.

GCHQ, known as Britain’s listening post, was located at the building for 66 years. They only revealed the location of their base in 2019 when announcing they were moving out.

However, despite the secrecy of the spy base, locals said they all knew what was going on in there. One local told the BBC: “It was just common knowledge. It looks suspect, doesn’t it? With those blacked-out windows. It’s a very secure building.” Another neighbour, the landlord of the Adam and Eve pub, said: “We don’t really talk about it.”

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GCHQ, or the Government Code & Cypher School as it was known at the time, was established in 1919 as a peacetime cryptanalytic unit. During the Second World War GCHQ staff moved to Bletchley Park where they decrypted German messages, most famously by breaking Enigma-encrypted communications, making a significant contribution to the Allied victory.

In 1953 they moved into Palmer Street where they would stay for the next six decades. During that time GCHQ said it played its part in significant events over the years, such as the 2012 London Olympics, working with MI6, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police to counter terrorist activities and serious and organised crime whilst keeping ministers up to date with security briefings.

When they relocated to Manchester in 2019, GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming said: “As we depart our Palmer Street site after 66 years, we look back on a history full of amazing intelligence, world-leading innovation, and the ingenious people who passed through those secret doors. Then, as now, it’s a history defined by the belief that with the right mix of minds, anything is possible.”

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