THE WWII code machine which was cracked by Britain’s greatest minds took pride of place at a Royston school.

Pupils at The Meridian School saw a genuine Enigma machine, discovered the secrets of the infamous device and learnt how the apparently unbreakable German code was beaten by a small group of mathematicians led by Alan Turing.

A presentation was given by Dr James Grimes from the University of Cambridge, who told the year nines about the machine and had a go at code breaking.

Mrs Chris Gratton, head of maths at Meridian said: “It was marvellous to see every year nine student so enthusiastically applying their logical and mathematical skills.”