Village of the Damned

As you maybe starting to gather I have an interest in the abandoned/disused/ derelict places which has covered building / factories / train stations to name a few but when I heard about a whole village I had to plan a visit. Ironically it was via a Railtour website which was pretty bizarre as the nearest railway line was miles away, in fact everything was miles away.

As you can see it's in the middle of nowhere no pubs, no shops and not many roads, it looked on the map as if everything around it had been removed. This was the village of Imber an uninhabited village in part of the British Army's training grounds on the Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. It is situated in an isolated area of the Plain, and isolated it is. Next challenge was how to get in safely to the middle of a missle and firing range, whilst I frequently wander a travel to places a little off the grid I have no desire to end up as target practice for our armed forces much as I would do my little bit for Queen and country.

Further research showed there were a handful of days where the barriers were lowered and gates open on the single road to allow public admittence, one of those being around the August Bank Holiday weekend so whilst the majority in my home area headed down to Whitstable (posh) or Margate (not quite so posh) I was heading for the Village of the Damned. Getting there was a chance to clock up another train route previously unchartered and as it happened gave my son the well earned chance to join me via stop at his home station. The nearest stop being Warminster which sounded as if Private Pike would be greeting us but it was not to be and just the single tax meet us, a local chap who had lived in the area for 15 years but when asked to take us to Imber he had no idea where it was!

Internet signal was virtually non existent and no sure if the was a pre-cursor to the Sailsbury Spy poisoning or just that not many people lived here and had better things to do than search the web.A short stop at the local Superstore - well corner shop that stops one of everything and we were heading in the right direction. We seems to be going miles into no-where and the cabbies meter was clocking up a rapid rate but some signs off life , a burnt out vechicle was a bit of a clue, not your usual Corsa or other hot hatch but a full blown tank!

We were now getting somewhere to nowhere and a few guarded barrier lifted we reached the edge of the Village. There was no phone signal, no birds, cats or dogs just a handful of people and army and... a whole abandoned village

This place was amazing it looks like the whole village had just been wiped out , which sadly was the case. The entire civilian population was evicted in 1943 to provide an exercise area for American troops preparing for the invasion of Europe during the Second World War.

After the war, villagers were not allowed to return to their homes. The village remains under the control of the Ministry of Defence despite several attempts by former residents to return. Non-military access is limited to several open days a year.

More and more of the place is apparantly being restricted on the restricted access days if you know what I mean and suspect it's only a matter of time before the free-range walkabout option is packaged into a guided tour. There is one building that remains fully in tact and in perfect working order and that is the splendid St Giles Church and its graveyard which remains in the hands of the Diocese of Salisbury, although access is like everything else controlled by the Ministry of Defence.

The place is silent even with a dozen or so people , some probably relatives from the original people forced to leave their homes. A few circuits of the village and a cheeky peek inside what was the original local boozer - the Bell Inn and time to head back to the real world. Thankfully the taxi driver who wandered around the village with us had long stopped his meter and said what a great day it had been and couldn't wait to tell his mates where he had been. Past the last blown up tank and the barrier shut firmly behind us leaving the Village to resume it's slumber for another four months before the next open access day sparks it back into life.