Welcome To The Lost Village Of Imber

Use the menu to discover the 7 pages of old photographs of Imber, as well as even more of how it looks now.

'ImberVillage.co.uk' pays tribute to the remarkable people who, until the evacuation, had lived in the 'lost' village of Imber, on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

Given nowhere to go Imber's villagers were 'liberated' of their homes in 1943, with just 47 days notice, to make way for American troops to train for the liberation of Europe during World War II. With foresight the Ministry of Defence, as it is now called, had before the war bought up the farms and even the village itself to make Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire the largest military training ground in the United Kingdom. Thus the villagers were 'just' tenants, so were easily made to go, but as they understood it only until the war ended. Salisbury Plain remains, even today, too useful a training ground, so the villagers were never allowed back.

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