Ghost towns are very rare in the UK as land mass is at a premium. 60 million people crammed onto a small island means land gets reused pretty fast.

And exception to this is the village of Iber, an ex-military village that stands on the Sailsbury plains, near Stonehenge. Abandoned by order of the UK military in 1943 the town has been used for training, some of the village buildings have been smashed and rebuilt a few times.

You wouldn’t think of anybody wishing to live in this isolated place but deeply hidden on Salisbury plain is the small deserted village of Imber.

Once housing around 440 people this small farming community became an ideal solution for the training army who had bought up most of the Plains to train for World War 1. The residents of the village became a nusiance for the army (it’s believed) and so, with the country at war for a second time decisions were made to move the residents out and move the army in.

Plans were made in 1943 to have the community moved in only one month so that troops could use the land for training purposes. Over the years there has been a debate rumbling that the residents were given some kind of promise that they could return to their homes once the village was no longer needed.

But, by 1947 most of the original houses had been wrecked by the army, who then re-built them as “shells”. To this day public access is kept to a strict minimum, with only a handful of days available to the public to visit.

The church of St Giles in the village still remains, it is protected by a high fence, though maintainence work is badly needed to restore the church to it’s former glory.

Once a year the church is opened for a rememberence service for the residents of Imber.

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