LOCAL
HISTORY - IMBER
Kindly
reproduced with permission from 'Wiltshire County
Council Libraries and Heritage'. http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/
Imber is the ghost village
of the Salisbury Plain. Kelly’s directory for 1939 tells
us it has an ancient church and a Baptist Chapel, that it
has an area of 3,052 acres and in 1931 its population was
152. It also says that the soil is flinty, the subsoil chalk
and that the chief crops are wheat, oats, barley and
pasture. Ominously it also records that the principal
landowner is the War Office.
Although there is evidence of prehistoric and Roman
settlement in the area, the first documentary mention of
Imber is in 967, when it was part of an endowment to the
Abbess of Romsey. It is mentioned in Domesday as being held
by Ralph of Mortimer, but this probably only referred to
that part of the village not held by Romsey Abbey. It has
been estimated that the population at that time was about
50. By 1377 the population had risen to 250, probably
remaining at that level till the nineteenth century. By 1801
it had risen to 331, by 1851 it had reached a peak of 440.
Then it commenced a decline, to 339 in 1881, 261 in 1901,
till by 1931 there were just 152 inhabitants.
Imber was a community dependent upon agriculture. Those who
were not directly employed on the land were in trades
dependent upon it. The decline in population is also
reflected in a decline in activity. The directory of 1867
lists 6 farmers, a tailor (and shopkeeper), a miller (and
Innkeeper), a boot and shoemaker and a blacksmith (and
shopkeeper). Whereas the 1939 directory lists 4 farmers, a
smallholder, an innkeeper, a carpenter and a blacksmith.
The village was in quite an isolated position, sheltering in
a fold in the downs some four miles from the nearest
village. It was elongated in shape, its main street
following the course of a stream known as “Imber Dock”.
The only building still more or less intact is the church.
This was described in the 1939 directory as “an ancient
and beautiful stone building of various dates, mainly in the
decorated and perpendicular styles. It has an embattled
western tower with five pinnacles and containing five
bells”. The description of the interior mentions the
effigies of two knights (now to be seen in Edington church).
The Baptist chapel, built in 1839, is also mentioned (this
was demolished some time ago and only the graveyard
remains). Besides a number of substantial farmhouses, the
main building of note was Imber Court. This was the manor
house, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, burnt down in 1920
and subsequently restored. Refreshment was supplied by the
Bell Inn.
From the late nineteenth century
military manoeuvres had been held on parts of the Salisbury
Plain and in 1897 the War Office began purchasing land in
the South East of the plain. The first world war and after
saw and increase in the need for such land and between 1927
and 1932 the War Office purchased a substantial part of the
north and west of the plain. This included most of the
village of Imber and its inhabitants became tenants of the
military. In the Second World War the need for training
areas intensified, especially in the preparations for D-Day.
On the 1st November 1943 the tenants were given just 47 days
notice to quit. Many of them left believing that they had
been promised a return after the war. This was not to
happen, it has been a training area ever since. Much of the
old village has since disappeared. In a final irony the army
has built a mock village, for training purposes, on the edge
of the old one.
KNOOK
and TYTHERINGTON