Friday 20th December 2019
From the Facebook page of St. Giles Church, Imber:
St. Giles Church has a new font from the chapel of St. Lawrence in Warminster. It was delivered by an army working party . If you have tickets for the Festival of Carols or will be visiting during the New Year open days you will be able to see this font which dates from 1840. Many thanks to those four soldiers who look so pleased, in the picture, to have the font in place.
www.facebook.com/imberchurch
Christmas Day 2013
Here’s a card we’ve received at dannyhowell.net
this Christmas. There’s no printed message inside,
so the sender wrote her own wishes inside to us,
and she chose the card for us, she says, because she
knew we would love the picture. And yes we do!
It depicts St. Giles’ Church, Imber, and is from
a watercolour by Hilary Jackson, who lives at
Victoria Road, Warminster. Hilary is obviously
very talented and it’s wonderful to know we
have such gifted artists and creative people
living and working in Warminster. If you want to
know more about Hilary and her work, visit
www.hilaryjacksonpaintings.com
email: hilaryjackson@hilaryjacksonpaintings.com
Friday 23rd August 2013
Gordon Lewis has compiled a booklet of his late mother-in-law’s childhood memories of living in Imber. Dolly Rebbeck spent 10 years of her childhood in the village on Salisbury Plain prior to the evacuation of all the villagers in November 1943. Dolly died in 2006.
The booklet, called Dolly’s Imber, can be purchased for £2.99. There are three ways to obtain a copy. It can be purchased online at www.gordonlewis.co.uk or cheques made payable to ‘Gordon Lewis’ can be sent to him at 51 Greenfields Avenue, Totton, Southampton, SO40 3LU. Or the booklet will be available at selected Imber village open days. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the evacuation of Imber.
Also available from Gordon Lewis is a greetings card featuring a watercolour of Imber, by Dolly’s other son-in-law Clifford Meade who is a freelance artist. The watercolour, which depicts St. Giles’ Church, Imber and the cottage Dolly lived in, is also available via Gordon’s website or by post from the above address. The watercolour costs £1.99.
Footnote: If the name Gordon Lewis sounds familiar to dannyhowell.net readers, it is probably because Bedeguar Books published Limb And Blood, a book by Gordon about his family history, back in 1995. Copies of Limb And Blood are still available via Gordon’s website or by post from him at the address above.
Wednesday 6th June 2012
T.C.7. Films UK present a look at Imber on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
A brief tour round the “ghost village” of Imber in Wiltshire, exploring the remains of a long lost community.
Imber was abandoned in 1943 as the whole of Salisbury Plain was needed for D Day training in preparation for the landings in France during the Second World War. Although the villagers were told they could return, the promise was never honoured and today it is now part of the Salisbury Plain military training ground.
Film clip uploaded to Youtube. Narrated by Robbie George.
To see the film clip, click here.
From Focus, 5, newsletter of the Warminster Liberal Party, November 1989:
A selection of Liberal summer activity 1989 . . . .
Got the army to open up the non-conformist chapel cemetery at Imber and laid on transport to take relatives of those buried there to visit.
Saturday 13th July 1985
A letter to the author of the Warminster Community Play – Imber. Now [2023] in the possession of Danny Howell:
11 Roundponds, Melksham, Wilts, SN12 8DJ.
Tel 708994
Dear Madam,
I heard on the Wiltshire radio that you were going to write a dramatisation of life at Imber before the War. If it is correct or not I do not know but my mother’s family were born and bred in the village nearly a century ago.
My grandfather was the shepherd on one of two farms which existed then, his name was Marsh; his wife, my grandmother, was named Early and her brother, who was the organist in the chapel, was one of a gang of four men who made dewponds which was the only source of water cattle had use of.
If you are requiring information about Imber I will supply as much as I know. There are photos available. The village is no more, just a ruin but I should like to think that a record is being made.
Sincerely, Mr R. Brinkworth.
Please telephone if interested as letters are going astray.
On 22 May 1985, Mrs Molly Archer Smith (born at Imber in 1914, the daughter of Sydney George Dean who farmed at Imber until 1943) was interviewed by the researchers for the Imber Community Play. The tape-recording has been transcribed and is reproduced here, featuring all the questions (each referred to as Q.) and the answers (A.) that were given. (Transcript in the possession of Danny Howell).
Q. “How far does your family go back in Imber?”
A. “About 300 years, I should think.”
Q. “You farmed in Imber?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “How many acres did you have?”
A. “Well, 1,072 I think, but at one time we had more because we took my father’s uncle’s farm, Court Farm. My father’s brother farmed Tinkers Farm, his cousin had Browns Farm, and we had Seagram’s Farm. So, in fact, we owned the whole village, well, farmed the whole village. We didn’t own our farm. We were tenant farmers and our farm belonged to a General Seagram.”
Q. “How many people did you employ?”
A. “I can’t remember exactly. I should think about ten, between the wars, or more. All the farmers employed more then than they do now.”
Q. “Were you a child in Imber?”
A. “I was born in Imber. So was my father born there and so was his father born there.”
Q. “What was your maiden name?”
A. “Dean.”
Q. “And the Deans had a farm?”
A. “The Deans had all the farms except Browns Farm which belonged to the Hoopers, who were our cousins. We seem to have all collected there.”
Q. “Well, you must have been happy there?”
A. “It was like, well it was, one big family. Everybody knew everybody, including the scandals.”
Q. “I bet they were rife?”
A. “It was quite a happy thing there.”
Q. “Quite a close knit community?”
A. “It was, because we had to depend on each other. My father and uncles were the only ones who had motor cars. We had a bus once a week, at the end, but when I was a child if anything was wanted, like an ambulance, my father did it. He drove patients to hospital in his car.”
Q. “Which hospital?”
A. “Warminster usually, but very serious things had to go to Salisbury.”
Q. “How far away is Salisbury from Imber?”
A. “Twenty miles.”
Q. “Can you go back to your childhood memories and the military? What can you remember?”
A. “What, with the military?”
Q. “When they starting coming towards Imber, buying up land?”
A. “I was away at school then, most of the time.”
Q. “Where did you go to school?”
A. “I went to school in a convent in Sherborne.”
Q. “Did you?”
A. “Yes but I don’t think that made a lot of difference. The ranges were used in the First World War. Before the War Office bought them they were gunnery ranges. They were purchased about fifteen years before the war. And there was a questionnaire about us leaving Imber but the Land Agent, then a Colonel Figgin, then went up to the House of Commons to ask if we were likely to be turned out, or if he could build some new cottages. They told him the ranges there were not long enough or big enough for modern guns and he could go ahead and build some cottages. So, he built fifteen new cottages, all with mod-cons.”
Q. “Yes, I was told that by a Mr. Pearce. And is this true that they were never lived in?”
A. “Oh, they were lived in, yes. He perhaps got muddled up with some of the other houses. No, there were no empty houses funnily enough.”
Q. “Now, to go back to the First World War?”
A. “Well, I was only born in 1914.”
Q. “You can’t remember your parents telling you anything about it?”
A. “No, not really. I can’t. It was a long time ago. Seventy odd years ago.”
Q. “How about the families in Imber, can you remember some of the names?”
A. “Oh, I remember the Meadens and the Daniels. We employed them all at one time. Funnily enough they were not inter-married very much.”
Q. “How did they meet prospective partners?”
A. “Well, we brought in servants, who got married within the twelve months as a rule. My governess went off with the gardener. She went off to Australia with the gardener. And people met other people from other villages. People in Imber used to walk to Chitterne and think nothing of it.”
Q. “How many miles away was Chitterne?”
A. “Well, three across the downs. And people used to cycle to Warminster, which was six miles away, which was nothing. Our postman used to walk to and from the village, twice a day.”
Q. “And he walked?”
A. “Sometimes he walked, sometimes he came by bike.”
Q. “I did hear that at one time the postman would deliver letters and then wait in a little box and wait for the letters going out of Imber and take them into Warminster?”
A. “Yes, at the end the letters were going Lavington-Devizes which was nearer. When I was small I think it was Imber-Warminster, then it became Imber-Devizes. It was marvellous, even on Christmas Day when he used to get so tight on the homemade wine, he would cycle out twice a day.”
Q. “They had pretty large families then, didn’t they?”
A. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Q. “Well, compared to today?”
A. “Yes and they were very good parents.”
Q. ” How big were the houses, the cottages?”
A. “Well, the real cottages were one and a half up. It was a big room and a landing room. And then a kitchen and a sitting room downstairs. But the modern ones they built had three bedrooms up, and a sort of sitting room cum kitchen downstairs, and a nice larder.”
Q. “They must have seemed like palaces to them?”
A. “Well, they were very tight-knit people. I remember when we had refugees from London, how cold they felt. The houses were too big for them, not enough people about. My grandmother’s old seamstress – do you know how they used to keep a woman up in the attic to do the sewing? – My grandmother had one in her attic and I think she had six children. Her husband worked for my uncle, I think, and Mrs. Goddard worked for us. She used to bring up her children on half a boiled egg for breakfast each morning.”
Q. “Did they have any bread?”
A. “Yes, she used to make her own bread and everything. We eat far too much now of the wrong thing. They were all very good gardeners. Our old blacksmith could grow anything. He had green fingers.”
Q. “Was that Albert Nash? He was a bit of a folk hero?”
A. “Yes, he is. We nearly broke our hearts when he died.”
Q. “It was a sad time when the village was evacuated?”
A. “It was very sad at the end. There was one old woman who had never seen a train, she had never seen the sea, and the furthest she had walked in two years was just up to the post office, otherwise she just stood at her gate and watched the world go by, absolutely happy. She didn’t want anymore.”
Q. “How did you manage for water?”
A. “We had wells. There were wells everywhere until we were put on the mains. We were put on the mains, we had wells until then.”
Q. “So, you had to take a bucket out to the well and lower it down?”
A. “Yes. It was the purest water you can get. We were all on the chalk.”
Q. “When did you get the water supply?”
A. “When they built the new cottages, I think. About ten years before. Father filled in all the wells he could find because they were dangerous. Then we went on to electricity. When I was young it was all candles and lamps. We made our own electricity with our own generator but all the cottages had candles and lamps.”
Q. “So, it was just the big families, the landowners, that had the generators?”
A. “Oh yes, in those days. We used petrol for the generator. We had our own pump in those days. It was only about two shillings and eleven pence in those days.”
Q. “Imber Court? That belonged to Major Whistler?”
A. “No, it belonged to a Holloway. It was built originally for the Dowager, Mrs Holloway, who never lived there. Before that my uncle lived there, then it was burned down in 21 and then it was re-built for the Dowager, Mrs Holloway, who never lived there.”
Q. “Where did she live?”
A. “In Lavington. Bob Whistler was manager for the Holloways. He used to ride horses and his daughter rode.”
Q. “Then Imber Court was re-built?”
A. “In 1921. It was burned down.”
Q. “How did it catch fire?”
A. “When they were redecorating it, I think. It was probably a cigarette end. I remember watching it from my bedroom window. It was an enormous fire. It was gutted.”
Q. “Was it built in the same style?”
A. “No, totally different. It was a beautiful house or it still would be if they had left it.”
Q. “When was it last used as a school?”
A. “That was way back. I can’t remember. It was long before my time. I think it belonged to the Church Commissioners. I never quite knew how this happened, but my uncle farmed Court Farm and he lived in a farmhouse behind the Court, but I don’t know whether that got burned down or something happened, so he moved into the Court House and lived in it but I don’t think uncle ever owned the house. I think it belonged to the Church Commissioners. They owned it until it burned down and then sold to Holloways.”
Q. “Who was the Dowager Holloway? I’ve never heard of her.”
A. “The Holloways lived in the Manor at Lavington, they did. Now he has just sold that and now lives in a very nice house just opposite the Manor. Sir Henry Holloway was the man who built the Bank of England and I think London Bridge. The Holloways are really an old Lavington family. I don’t know why Mrs Holloway never lived at Imber Court. I think she didn’t want to live in Imber.”
Q. “Any special memories that stick out in your mind about Imber, as a child, when you came home? Did a road go through Imber to anywhere else or was Imber the end of various roads?”
A. “No, it went right through from Lavington, right through to Warminster.”
Q. “So, Imber was on the way to somewhere else?”
A. “Yes, it was a cut through. I think my great great grandfather made the first road through to Imber, when it was a dead stop. He made the first road from Gore Cross, which was Lavington to Imber. I don’t know who made the road beyond Imber.”
Q. “Reading and talking about Imber it always seems as though Imber was a rather special and isolated community. Was this in fact so or did I get the wrong impression?”
A. “No, I suppose we were isolated, but we never felt so. I suppose the young in the village felt so when they became 17 and 18 and could only get out on bikes. You see, we were lucky in that we always had a car, but I suppose to other people we were isolated, but not to us. All the tradesmen came into the village. We need never go out, because everything came to the door. The butcher, fishman, groceries, everything.”
Q. “From Lavington and Warminster?”
A. “Warminster. And we had the little village shop, which had everything, and the post office sold things, so we were very well served. The people were good people. We had a wonderful school mistress. I can’t remember her name. Her pupils were marvellous. They had good manners. Miss Miles, that was her name. She was the last one. We had everything at Imber. It was lovely. Then we had the floods up but we were very strong. About every third year the floods would come up and we had to go round in boats or sometimes on stilts or a horse and cart, but that was alright. Then the Army came along and spent a million pounds trying to drain the village and then they turned us out. Incredible, isn’t it? Our old blacksmith could mend anything and he used to make firearms from the copper they took off the shells in the First World War. He used to make the most wonderful things. He was a real artist.”
Q. “And this was Albert Nash? What sort of a person was he?”
A. “An eccentric.”
Q. “In what way?”
A. “He was, shall I say, independent of the village, independent of everything. He lived his own life. His garden and his work was his world. I think he poached a lot but he was a very nice man. Albert’s grandchildren are still alive I think. The Nash family were there nearly as long as the Dean family. It was a good community. We never locked our doors then. Father left machinery out and no one ever touched anything. I don’t know why it has made such a stir this little village of ours but it has. Mind you had it been returned Salisbury Plain would have been a very different place today because it would have been built on and that would have been sad.”
Q. “So, what are your feelings?”
A. “At first they were very bitter. It was the way it was done and we hated so much. Had we been told straight out we were leaving the village for good we would have accepted, but we were not. We were promised that we would come back again and father was asked to leave stock at Imber but he wasn’t about to. So there is that about it. Now, as the years have passed and you look back on it, I’m glad the Plain hasn’t been developed, looking at the modern architecture. And the Army are quite good. I had to ring them this morning because one of the stones over the drain was smashed. They will attend to it. As for Imber, I think the Army will allow people up there to see it.”
Q. “So, the Army are quite amenable, even today?”
A. “Oh yes. We go back every year. Amazing. I never know where the people come from. There aren’t many Imber people left of my generation. I think they are all dead except myself and one other.”
Q. “Between the War years, what happened around Imber then?”
A. “The Army trained and we farmed.”
Q. “You lived side by side?”
A. “Oh yes, quite happily.”
Q. “Did they train on the land you were farming?”
A. Oh yes. Schedule 3 and Schedule 1, you see, I think that was within a mile of the house and I think you paid so much rent and then you had a cheaper rent further afield and they could do what they liked with it and you couldn’t claim compensation for it but you could if they got on to Schedule 1 but they never did, they were very good.”
Q. “You didn’t find it interfered with you too much? You can’t remember family rows when father or uncle were arguing?”
A. “No, no. The only trouble was the cattle getting out on Sunday mornings. It was alright though.”
Q. “Sundays?”
A. “We all had our tennis courts at the houses. We had wonderful tennis tournaments. In fact the last tennis tournament we had, we had 72 couples. We used to run cars between the different houses and we used to feed people for tea and supper and think nothing of it. If it got very dark before the finals we used to bring our cars, with the headlights on, around the tennis court.”
Q. “What families used to come to these tournaments? Were they Imber families?”
A. “No. From miles around. Then the War came and it scattered us.”
Q. “Can you remember the 1,000 yard safety area around the village?”
A. “Not really. It was never really used as a target area. Any damage that was done was decay or purely accidental. The actual ranges are, of course, at Larkhill, on that side, and at the Warminster end, over the western side. Round the village, if I remember, was out of bounds to tanks. The Army used the Imber area for ordinary purposes and not for tanks. Although I have seen a good many tanks come through, maybe by mistake or just bad map reading. There is a move afoot to have a plaque made recording this fact that the people of Imber gave up their homes, and to have the plaque sited somewhere near the Robber’s Stone at Gore Cross. We have put a letter to the Council which I gather has been passed to Wiltshire County Council. If anything will come of it I don’t know, but there is quite a strong feeling this account should be recorded in some way because it is an uncommon sort of thing, but what the outcome will be I don’t know.”
Q. “The letter signed by Lt. Col. Thorn, Land Agent. It appears from the tone of the letter which accompanied this letter that this was supposed to go to each house, but then it appeared it was withdrawn?”
A. “It was a shame we couldn’t find this when we wanted to fight. Well, I’ve never seen it.”
Q. “So, you weren’t there during the evacuation?”
A. ” I was there on the day. I was in the Army otherwise.”
Q. “Could you describe the day? I used the expression “flags flying’.”
A. “Definitely the attitude but there was quite a lot of misery. Well, there had to be. Poor darlings. A lot of them didn’t even know where they were going. They went to cottages here, there, and everywhere, to any empty cottages they could find in other places. They only had six weeks. It took a lot of organising and in those days there were no buses or pantechnicons and things like that. You just had to get things away as you could.”
Q. “Did a lot of people leave their furniture?”
A. “No, they took their furniture. Army lorries, I think, moved their furniture.”
Q. “What did you do on that day? Do you remember what you did?”
A. “Well, I think we drank coffee a lot of the day. People came and went from about six o’clock in the morning. Charlie Hooper’s sheep got lost and we went searching for those and it snowed and it rained. We also had a bit of fog and it was very wet and cold. We were miserable. We just wanted to get into the new houses and get warm.”
Q. “And afterwards?”
A. “It was awfully sad because we lost contact with everybody. I must say the real day that really hurt me was when they bulldozed the garden. Because, for years we went back and you could always pick a flower or two there, and one year I went back and they had bulldozed the gardens, and that was dreadful.”
Q. “How long after the evacuation was that?”
A. “That was in the Sixties.”
Q. “So they had left the gardens for a while?”
A. “The gardens gave a little character for a while but when they bulldozed them everything was flattened and it was awful.”
Q. “Where did you go on December 17th 1943?”
A. “Father went to North Manor at Tilshead. He couldn’t afford to take another farm because he thought genuinely that he was going back to Imber, you see, and he couldn’t afford to take another farm and then re-take Imber again, so, as you know, farming in the Thirties was a dreadful time, and so we went to the Manor at Tilshead. When he realised that Imber wasn’t coming back he moved to a farm at Netheravon. “
Q. “How about the farmers selling their stock?”
A. “That was the day we moved out. It was a great loss because it was the wrong time of year, and it was the wrong time of the year for the corn and all the livestock.”
Q. “They must have been almost given away?”
A. “I can’t remember. I know we did well with the cattle but I don’t know about the sheep.”
Q. “You actually left on December 17th? You waited for the very last day? How about the others? Did they wait?”
A. “Most of the old working people were gone and everything was shut up.”
Q. “It must have been a terrific shock for them?”
A. “I think it must have been awful, but as I said they were very patriotic. Even though it was a terrible shock they all believed they would go back again. When we were told we wouldn’t go back, that was an even greater shock. I know it nearly killed my father. He was never the same man. He couldn’t believe it. I remember the morning I said “Get everything written down, father,’ and he turned round and said “The General had shaken my hand.’ Now, that to my father, was a contract. When my grandparents took over Seagram’s Farm there was nothing written. It was all done on a handshake. There were no written records anywhere. No one ever thought of breaking that word. That’s how the farm was acquired. The let-down over Imber, that was what really damaged father. He couldn’t believe an Englishman had let him down. He said if we had been run out by Germans he could have understood that. But it’s over.”
Q. “And what are your memories after?”
A. “Bitter for years.”
Q. “Do you know Austin Underwood?”
A. “Yes. He has fought hard for us but there is nothing we can do. We used to have wonderful feasts up in the Court Barn for Coronations. In fact we had everything. I think today people would appreciate it very much. We made our own amusement and really we were very happy. On Christmas Eve we used to put out mince pies and lemonade in the summer house and the families would sing carols. That was the only time us little children were allowed to stay up.”
Q. “Did the young people of Imber tend to go out of Imber to find work elsewhere? Was it, in a sense, because it was a dying community or were there people coming into the community, balancing the people that went out?”
A. “I suppose we were declining in numbers towards the end. A lot of young men went out to work away. We had a lot of men went into the services and some went on to farms surrounding the village, while some stayed at home and followed their fathers. Some went elsewhere to get married but brought their wives back to the village.”
Q. “Earlier you said you never locked your doors. You didn’t have a police house or anything like that?”
A. “No, we were very law-abiding.”
Q. “No police house but you had a post office?”
A. “We had a post office, shop, pub, a vicarage and a school.”
Q. “Was it a one-roomed school?”
A. “Yes. The little boys used to raise their hats and say “Good morning.’ They read their Bibles and spoke English, which is more than they can do today!”
The following recollections of Imber were shared in 1985 by Jim Mullins to Moreen Butler and Danny Howell (researchers for the Warminster Community Play Imber):
When the War Department bought up land around the Imber area, people started to move away as jobs on the land were becoming scarce.
Six council houses were built at Imber, two years before the evacuation of the village.
I was not compensated by the War Department even though I had to leave the village.
I remember Albert Nash’s son, Jimmy, who used to go into Warminster on his motorbike to buy bloaters in bulk – he would sell them for one penny each at Imber.
Mr Hooper lent the men of the village a hall for their leisure activities. The men called it their club.
Every year there was a fete at Imber.
In 1912, Jimmy Goddard was a pigsticker. Most people in Imber kept a pig.
A Mr Chapman was a pigsticker. He also made bee wine (mead). After one night of celebration with bee wine all night, the party crawled home as they were so drunk. Jim Elloway was ill for two weeks afterwards.
Bert (surname not mentioned) played the organ at the chapel.
I worked for Bishop’s, the local fishmonger and fruiterer in Warminster, and I delivered supplies in Warminster, Sutton Veny and Longbridge Deverill. I remember delivering to one old lady who had brown bosoms through spilling the snuff she used to take. I also remember another woman who offered herself to me when she didn’t have any money to pay for the fish or fruit!
Friday 7th December 1984
Bruce Watkin, in his Imber Village Trail (published December 1984), noted:
The last windmill was on Windmill Piece, a little knoll west of the Vicarage. Windmill Field, about a quarter of a mile south, suggests that there was another, or older, mill there.
An article penned in September 1978 by “A Bystander” who visited Imber on the occasion of the annual Holy Communion and Evensong services at St. Giles” Church. The services were conducted by the Rev. Ralph Dudley, Vicar of Imber:
There is a point on the Imber road, half a mile or so beyond the new tank hangars where the track climbs up beside a copse to a ridge and seems to stop, as if the ground beyond it has caved in and left a precipice.
From that summit you can look down into the wide rush-coloured valley and see the same road snaking down, and pretend you are in Africa or have survived a dreadful catastrophe, because the ranges are like a wasteland, the last sort of place on earth where on a Saturday morning you would expect to find a string quartet playing or an old woman decorating a grave with red dahlias.
We slipped along the dusty road between Summer Down and Southdown Sleight along the avenue of dead tanks until we reached a pocket of trees. It was as if, as suddenly as we had found ourselves drifting into a sinister, ruined country, we had come upon a neglected Surrey lane where no-one cleared the dead wood out of the hedgerows or fed the birds.
The first building we passed was set back behind a wall and high gates on the crown of a right-hand bend. There was a worm of barbed wire across the drive. As we went by two men vaulted over the gate like burglars.
St. Giles’ Church was plugged in like a sick patient in a hospital ward. There were cables trailing out of it down the hill to a mobile generator and hot lamps burning in the chancel. We walked through the porch past a huddle of film technicians and found seats near the back. We looked at the walls which were the colour of weathered skin and at the sweltering congregation, all of whom like us must have come across the gloomy tundra and seen the smoke from the stubble fires hanging on the skyline.
We listened to the string quartet playing while the churchmen and the clergy were gathering and making ready for the communion service and felt we did not belong and ought not to stay.
And so we went outside into the sunshine and prowled around among the graves. We saw three people tending three family plots, an older and a younger woman dressed in blue and a man in brown. The women were arranging flowers while the man clipped back the grass with long-handled shears.
There were small artificial wreaths lying beside the stones as well, and one of the women told me how each Christmas another member of their family would drive to Imber and if he could not reach the church by the road he would crawl in through a badger-run to replace the plastic flowers and make sure that everything was in order.
Three-quarters of an hour later the singing stopped and the church doors opened. When the people filed out they were faced by a man carrying a film camera on his shoulder and pointing it at them like a rocket-launcher. Another outsider wearing headphones and carrying a huge bazooka of a microphone crept and cringed among them as they began to find their friends and welcome each other home.
Someone showed us an album of photographs of the village as it used to be – secluded, picturesque, apparently content to do without mains water, electricity, gas and all the rest of the hardware of the modern world, which in such curious circumstances comes down among.
First we circled the gunmen’s coverts, a row of concrete block-houses built in the Belfast-Beirut style without roofs, window-frames or front doors so that soldiers can get to grips with the crudities of modern warfare, and we noticed, in comparison with everything else still standing in Imber, how sturdily they were made. Which will be Imber’s last monument, I wonder, St. Giles’ or O’Connor’s the butchers who never sold a sausage?
And then we set off up the Heytesbury road, all the way back to the vedette post we saw nothing but a single coaster steaming upstream to the deserted docklands.
