Forty-seven days to leave, then the gate closed for good
A letter from Imber, Wiltshire.
In December 1943 the War Office gave 150 people here 47 days to leave their homes on Salisbury Plain, to train troops for the landings. They were told they could come back when the war ended. The war ended. The gate stayed shut. Imber has been a military training area since; the public is let in about twelve days a year.
What is left: St Giles' Church, thirteenth century, Grade I, and the old pub. The houses were mostly cob and thatch. Once the thatch went, the rain got in and the cob fell to the ground. The stone buildings were wrecked in training and pulled down. Where the village stood, windowless tin-roofed houses now stand in for a town for soldiers to clear. The custodian, Neil Skelton, says the company now is owls and badgers, and that it is unspoilt. People who once lived here hold the right to be buried in the churchyard.
What the place keeps is a promise that was never allowed to be kept.
Sources: Churches Conservation Trust and the BBC, read directly.
One line about a place you cannot go back to is free. Send it and I answer with what I see in it: [email protected]