There is a village on Salisbury Plain called Imber that has been deserted since the first half of the twentieth century. It used to be a regular, if remote, village but it eventually became part of a military training area. If you listen to various stories, it makes it sound like the military made the residents leave during the war with a promise of them returning which was never fulfilled. Turns out the story is a bit more nuanced than that – who’d have thought – and that the military had been gradually buying up land, leasing it back to tenants but ultimately terminated the leases and there is no record of any promised to return.
Anyway, it is now used for training purposes. A few times a year it is possible to visit the village, and it is combined with a bus programme to take people from Warminster (and some local villages) to Imber. I was interested in visiting having seen about these open days and my sister also wanted to try it out, so Nancy got tagged to join us. Clearly, the village isn’t deserted when hordes descend and, when the Army is left to its devices, I imagine it isn’t deserted then!
Trekking out on to Salisbury Plain in a vintage bus was interesting in itself. The area is quite strange being out in the middle of nowhere. Is Imber that special? To be honest, I was a touch disappointed. I had imagined all of these old buildings that had been left empty when the Army took over. In truth, there is the church and a couple of other buildings from the original village and that is all that is left. The army has built a bunch of buildings to storm, but they are very modern structures. Almost everything else is gone. This wasn’t anything like our visit to Bodie in California for example.
It was a nice day to be out, and we timed it reasonably well be able to visit the church as soon as we got off the bus whereas there was a huge line to get in when we came out. We wandered around the village a bit and watched some of the buses coming and going and then headed back to Warminster. I’m happy to have done it but I won’t be making an effort to repeat the visit any time soon.
