An extraordinary place and it’s haunted by the ghosts of the people who used to live here and the ghosts of thousands of military people who’ve trained here…
Lord Peter Hendy

About Imber Village

The now uninhabited village of Imber on Salisbury Plain was evacuated in 1943 to create a training area for US troops preparing for D-Day and is the only village not to have be returned after the war.

The historic Wiltshire village – a settlement dating back to Roman times – continues to be used for military training and many of the original village building have been demolished to make way for empty ‘house-like’ buildings constructed in the 1970s to aid urban warfare training.

A few of the pre-1943 buildings still remain, including St Giles’ Parish Church, the Bell Inn and Imber Court and these are accessible a few times a year when the MOD open the site to the public.

Imberbus

Each August, volunteers gather to run a bus service to Imber to raise money for charity. For one Saturday only, over 40 Routemaster buses ferry members of the public from Warminster Station to the ghost village of Imber, on to New Zealand Camp, Brazen Bottom and to the villages of Tilshead and Chitterne.

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All images © W N BISHOP