Life returns to Imber for service

From the Amesbury Journal, first published Friday 2nd Jan 2004.

FOR 60 years the village has stood silent and empty, but the December 20 ceremony near St Giles' Church showed that Imber is far from forgotten.

About 30 people braved the weather to attend a service at the Imber war memorial, determined to show that the ministry of defence's decision to take over the Salisbury Plain village was still opposed.

The whole community was obliged to leave, in the cause of the war effort, just a week before Christmas 1943 - and promises that the villagers would eventually be able to return came to nothing.

Villagers were given a few shillings for the vegetables in their sheds and gardens and ordered to leave.

Imber now stands a ghost village, closed to the outside world except for a few days each year and only the Grade II listed 13th Century church - although emptied of all its furnishings - is kept in a state of repair.

The service was led by the vicar of Edington and Imber, the Reverend Dr Graham Southgate, and was followed by a long and poignant silence for those who gave their lives in the Great War.

Ken Mitchell was the only former resident able to attend the ceremony.

He was born in the village in 1926 and believed it was important to return, especially as illness prevented his brother from joining him.

William Prior (83) used to cycle from Westbury to Imber as a young boy.

He said: "Coming back here and having this service is all about memories.

"There were bad memories, but we forget those. We remember the good times - and we had good times."

Since 1961, the village has been the focus of an action group which aims to see it returned to the people, although they are now most concerned with ensuring rights of access to, and a future for, the church.

Ruth Underwood, whose father, Austin, was a founder of that group, laid flowers at the memorial and visited the peace tree, an old apple tree that has become a symbol of hope and lost village life.

The card with her flowers read: "In memory of all lives lost in war and in the hope that Imber will now become a place of peace and reconciliation."

The intention to make Imber a symbol of the anti-war movement was to be reinforced this week, with the group planning to hold a peace vigil in the village on New Year's Eve.

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