64 Baker Street is a historical reference project devoted to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the people who served within and alongside it, and the clandestine operations, resistance networks, locations, technologies, and surviving records associated with Britain’s secret war during the Second World War.
The project has an unusual history of its own. The domain 64-baker-street.org has existed since the early years of the public web, and surviving references show that an earlier website at this address was already being used as an online resource on SOE history more than two decades ago.
The present 64 Baker Street project builds on that historical association while developing the site as a modern, independently researched reference resource.
The Origins of the Domain
Public domain records indicate that 64-baker-street.org was originally registered on July 5, 2000.
That date is significant. At the beginning of the 2000s, detailed information about the Special Operations Executive was considerably less accessible online than it is today. Digitized archives were limited, many historical collections had not yet been comprehensively catalogued for web users, and research about individual SOE agents was scattered across books, archival records, specialist organizations, personal websites, and historical societies.
The earlier 64-baker-street.org became part of that emerging online research landscape.
Surviving external references show pages from the website being cited as early as 2001, including material concerning RAF pilot Hugh Verity and clandestine Lysander operations supporting SOE agents and the French Resistance.
By 2003 and 2004, other internet discussions were linking directly to the site and describing it as a resource about the Special Operations Executive. In May 2004, for example, a discussion in a Second World War history group recommended 64-baker-street.org to a researcher seeking information about SOE.
The Women of the Special Operations Executive
One of the clearest surviving identities of the original website was its coverage of women who served with the SOE.
Historical references preserve links to individual profiles including Nancy Wake, Virginia Hall, Sonia Butt, and other agents.
A 2004 discussion concerning Nancy Wake linked directly to the site’s profile of her, while Barnard College’s archives later cited the site’s Virginia Hall page among the sources used for an article on Hall’s intelligence career.
Genealogical reference site The Peerage also preserved citations identifying material from 64-baker-street.org as The Women of the Special Operations Executive, including its profile of Sonia Butt.
The reach of the earlier project extended beyond individual web references. A finding aid for archival holdings relating to the Carpetbaggers and the 492nd Bombardment Group at the United States Air Force Academy identifies an article on Virginia Hall from The Women of the Special Operations Executive and records 64-baker-street.org as its website source.
These surviving citations provide valuable evidence of the site’s historical subject matter even where the original pages themselves are no longer continuously available.
A Broader SOE Reference Resource
The old site appears to have covered more than biographies.
External links preserved references to pages on the history of the SOE, obituaries of people associated with wartime intelligence and special operations, research resources, and other historical subjects.
A 2009 discussion seeking information about an SOE veteran pointed researchers toward the site’s resource section.
A bibliography concerned with RAF Tempsford and clandestine wartime aviation also listed 64-Baker-Street.org/SOE/ among its recommended websites, alongside archival records, books, films, and other specialist sources.
By 2009, another historical reference work described 64 Baker Street specifically as a website about “The Women of the Special Operations Executive.”
Later historical pages continued to preserve links to its material even after many original URLs became unavailable.
Why the Name Matters
The name was never arbitrary.
64 Baker Street in London was the wartime headquarters of the Special Operations Executive.
M. R. D. Foot’s official history of SOE in France records that the core of SOE moved into 64 Baker Street on October 31, 1940. The organization soon outgrew the building and expanded into neighboring premises.
The association became so strong that “Baker Street” was used as shorthand for SOE itself, while members of the organization became associated with the nickname “Baker Street Irregulars.”
Westminster City Council later installed a green plaque at 64 Baker Street identifying the site as the headquarters of the Special Operations Executive from 1940 to 1946 and noting its role in supporting resistance in enemy-occupied countries.
For a historical project about SOE, the address therefore represents both a physical headquarters and a symbolic center from which a much larger story can be explored.
The Rebuilt 64 Baker Street
The present rebuild of 64-baker-street.org began in 2026.
Rather than changing the domain to an unrelated subject, the project deliberately returns to the historical field with which the site has long been associated.
The rebuilt site expands the concept into a more structured reference work covering:
- SOE agents and personnel;
- women of the SOE;
- country sections and headquarters staff;
- resistance circuits and networks;
- operations and sabotage missions;
- training schools and clandestine locations;
- RAF support and secret aviation;
- wireless communications and codes;
- equipment and specialist technology;
- Force 136 and operations in Asia;
- archival records and personnel files;
- timelines, maps, and research tools.
This approach preserves the strongest part of the site’s historical identity while allowing the project to address areas that were difficult to document comprehensively during the early years of the web.
Rebuilding From Evidence, Not Simply Replicating the Past
The current project is not intended to reproduce the old website page for page.
Historical websites inevitably reflect the sources, technology, and research environment available when they were created. More archival material has since become searchable, scholarship has developed, institutional collections have been digitized, and many individual personnel files can now be located through modern catalogues.
The National Archives, for example, maintains extensive SOE holdings within the HS series, with personnel files principally catalogued in HS 9 and additional material appearing across operational, country, intelligence, Air Ministry, War Office, Foreign Office, and other government records.
This creates an opportunity to revisit subjects covered by the earlier site using stronger documentation and more explicit sourcing.
Our goal is therefore to recover valuable subjects, not automatically inherit old conclusions.
When an important historical page formerly existed at 64-baker-street.org, the rebuilt project may create a new article addressing the same person or subject. The new version should be researched from available evidence, independently written, properly sourced, and updated where scholarship or archival records permit.
Preserving the Useful Parts of the Old Web
Older historical websites form part of the history of online scholarship themselves.
External references to former 64 Baker Street pages remain scattered across historical forums, bibliographies, genealogical resources, academic material, and specialist research websites. Some of those links point to information that researchers once found useful but can no longer easily reach.
Where possible, the current project intends to identify significant former URLs and map them to appropriate modern resources.
This serves two purposes: it reduces dead ends for researchers following old citations, and it preserves continuity between subjects historically associated with the domain and the new reference structure.
It does not mean that every statement previously published under the domain is automatically endorsed by the present project.
Each rebuilt page is subject to the current project’s research and editorial standards.
An Independent Historical Project
The present 64 Baker Street is an independent historical reference project.
Unless explicitly stated on a particular page, it should not be assumed to represent, be operated by, or be officially affiliated with:
- The National Archives;
- Imperial War Museums;
- the UK Ministry of Defence;
- the British Government;
- any intelligence or special forces organization;
- veterans’ organizations;
- museums or archives cited in our research.
Likewise, publicly available evidence does not provide a sufficiently complete record for us to make broad claims about every owner, contributor, researcher, or editorial decision associated with previous versions of 64-baker-street.org.
Where the history of the earlier website cannot be verified, we prefer to acknowledge the gap rather than invent a continuous narrative.
Our Direction
The next stage of 64 Baker Street is intended to transform the site from a collection of individual historical pages into a connected research resource.
An agent should connect to their section, codename, network, colleagues, operations, locations, chronology, and archival records.
An operation should connect to the people who planned and carried it out, the resistance groups involved, the locations where it occurred, and the documents through which historians can investigate it.
A location should connect to the organizations, agents, aircraft, technologies, and events associated with it.
Over time, these relationships can create a much richer picture of how the Special Operations Executive actually functioned.
Continuing the Record
The history of SOE is complicated because secrecy was fundamental to the organization itself. Documents were dispersed, identities were concealed, agents used aliases and codenames, records were sometimes destroyed, and post-war accounts do not always agree.
Research therefore remains an ongoing process rather than a finished catalogue of unquestionable facts.
64 Baker Street will continue to develop as new articles are researched, archival references are identified, older pages are reconstructed, errors are corrected, and relationships between people and operations become clearer.
The website has carried the name 64 Baker Street since the early days of the web.
The rebuilt project gives that name a renewed purpose: to document, organize, and make accessible the history of the Special Operations Executive and the people whose secret work extended from a London headquarters to occupied territories across Europe and Asia.