The Abandoned Village of Imber

The three well-used Ordnance Survey Pathfinder maps that cover my little area of Wiltshire are dotted with fascinating little landmarks, place names and natural features that (during this time of Covid19 lockdown and restrictions on travel) have piqued my curiosity even more than they would normally have, and this last two months I've been getting out three or four days each week to discover a few of them.

Among the more intriguing but elusive discoveries I've made from my torn and dirty but much-loved maps are the sites of five or six vanished medieval villages shown on them. There's never much to see when I get there - a few faint earthworks and ditches at best, but they're fascinating nonetheless.

It's estimated that around three thousand of these ghostly, vanished settlements are scattered across the country. These ancient communities faded away after the inhabitants fled from coastal erosion (most famously at Dunwich in Suffolk) or died from the Black Death (as at Cosmeston in Glamorganshire). Many villages were victims of wealthy (and tyrannical) landowners who found more profitable ways of using their estate (nothing's changed there, then) and forced whole village communities out of their homes.

Much more recently, communities such as Mardale in the Lake District and Derwent in Derbyshire were drowned following the building of new reservoirs, and many other settlements were abandoned after a decline in the local economy. Then there's Old Arkwight Town (also in Derbyshire) which has probably the most bizarre reason of all for being abandoned: in 1988 large quantities of methane started leaking from abandoned coal mines beneath the village and led to some of its houses being abruptly evacuated, for obvious safety reasons. The whole village was later abandoned and moved to a safer location nearby in the early 1990s.

The deserted village of Imber, sitting in a remote position at the heart of Salisbury Plain, about 15 miles northwest of Stonehenge, is rather different. The village nestled undisturbed in a gentle hollow at the heart of the exposed plain for centuries (it's even mentioned in the Doomsday Book), until everything changed abruptly after WWII broke out. The British military purchased the land around Imber in about 1930, and by the start of the War had already bought up around half of the sparsely populated, 300 square-kilometer Salisbury Plain. The villagers were allowed to live normally while training on the plain continued until November 1st 1943, when a letter from the local War Department office at Durrington arrived. The letter began:

Arising out of the decision that increased training facilities are to be made available in the Imber area, I regret to inform you that it is necessary to evacuate the major part of the Department's Imber Estate, including your dwelling.

To this end I enclose you formal notice to quit. The area has to be evacuated and made available for training by Dec 17th. In this connection you will note that the formal notice to quit expires on [...] and it is confirmed that there will be no objection, if it assists you, to your remaining in your dwelling as tenant on sufferance until a date not later than Dec 17th 1943.

Although told they could return to their village after six months, Imber and the surrounding area has remained a restricted area ever since, and completely off-limits to civilians. Following a protest in January 1961, during which around 2,000 people managed to breach military security and reached the village, the MoD made a small concession, opening the village's church for services one Sunday a year in early September.

Today Imber and a vast area of Salisbury Plain surrounding the remains of the settlement is totally out-of-bounds to civilians for about 350 days of each year, but for a couple of days over Easter, spring and August bank holidays, and during the Christmas season, the army throws open the gates blocking the access roads that cross the Imber Live Firing Range to the village, and the public get to enter and explore just a little of this most mysterious corner of of our beautiful country.

GETTING TO IMBER (on the rare days when it's accessible!)

The best of the four roads to Imber (and therefore the wisest way to approach by car, motorbike or cycle - it's too far to walk in) are from Warminster in the west and Gore Cross to the east. Coming in from Gore Cross, Salisbury Plain is at its wild, forbidding finest, with at first nary a single tree or large bush to punctuate the bleak grasslands. After a couple of miles though, the landscape softens, and the tower of Imber's most prominent surviving old building, the church, pokes out between trees in a sheltered hollow in the plain, still several miles away.

Approaching Imber from Warminster in the west, the austere, seemingly lifeless grasssland is dotted with the shells of abandoned tanks (used for live ammunition practice), several of which are clearly visible from the road. They're an intriguing, almost surreal sight, but don't venture even a foot off the tarmac road to take a closer look, as there's no telling what lurks shrouded beneath the heather and bracken!

The STANTA and LULWORTH RANGE VILLAGES

Imber certainly wasn't the only English village to be abruptly taken over by the military during WWII (and never returned to civilians). Not so far away, the magnificently situated settlement of Tyneham (near Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset), suffered the same fate, as did the lost villages of Langford, Stanford, Sturston & Tottington in Norfolk, which now lie within STANTA (the Stanford Training Area), near Thetford. Visiting the STANTA villages is an even harder logistical feat than getting to Imber, as they can only visited via several annual guided tours, which may book out months in advance.

By contast, what's left of Tyneham village, on the Lulworth Ranges less than a mile inland from the sea cliffs of Dorset's dramatic Jurassic Coast, can be readily visited when the shooting ranges aren't in use (which is most weekends throughout the year, and the whole of the summer holidays.)

Tyneham's easy access, together with its lack of any really fascinating old buildings, makes it a much less intriguing experience than the pilgrimage to remote, mysterious Imber, but the fantastic beaches and clifftop walks nearby more than make up for it!