Links

Wiltshire Heritage Museum

Archives on Imber are available to the public at Wiltshire Heritage Museum,
41 Long Street, Devizes, Wiltshire, SN10 1NS www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk
Tel: 01380 727369 email: [email protected]
Librarian and Archivist: Dr Lorna Haycock.

An exhibition entitled Little Imber on the Downe, Seven Miles from any Towne ran at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, from May until August 2008.

"Using photographs from our own collection this special display tells the story of Imber village on Salisbury Plain, taken over by the military during World War II.

Imber village was taken over by the War Office just before Christmas 1943 and now forms part of the Salisbury military ranges. Mainly through the use of photographs recently donated to our collection, 'Little Imber on the Downe, Seven Miles from any Towne', aims to tell visitors about this remote community, its people and how they lived. It also looks at how the residents reacted on being told they would have to vacate their properties and what happened to them, and the village, after the war ended."

Some images from the exhibition have been put on the BBC Wiltshire website. Click here to view them.

Wiltshire and Swindon Archives

Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Cocklebury Road, Chippenham, Wiltshire SN15 3QN
Tel: 01249 705500 email: [email protected]
Opening Hours normally Tuesday to Saturday, 9.30am to 5.30pm

Among other Imber resources is a large box of thirteen files belonging to the late Austin Underwood. Originally housed at the Wiltshire Record Office in Trowbridge, now relocated in the new centre in Chippenham.

Links

Virtual Reality Tour of St Giles Church, Imber

http://www.oodwooc.co.uk/ph_imber.htm

A great website created by Duncan and Mandy Ball with 94 photos of the church, both exterior and interior, taken in April 2004 before current renovations began. Pictures of gravestones, windows, memorial tablets, war memorials and wall paintings. Includes a short history of the church taken from Tim Garraway Jones's booklet A Walk Through the Lost Village of Imber on Salisbury Plain.

"We began taking photographs of Wiltshire churches in 1998 when we started researching our own family history
...We started a website so other people could also see these beautiful buildings and, perhaps for the first time, experience where their own ancestors had been baptized, married or buried...
...to preserve their detail for future generations before time and weather erodes them further
...Now has over 2,300 pages, containing over twenty eight thousand photographs of 185 mostly Wiltshire churches."
Duncan and Mandy Ball

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Freelance journalist Stuart Campbell visited Imber in August 2005 and put a sequence of 30 photographs on http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/imber/imber.htm

"...On a beautiful, sunny summer's day, the drive from Bath to Imber is a scenic and leisurely one
...It's not easy to find the "ghost village" of Imber. On maps its location is a great big blank space, and it doesn't appear on any road signs. You only know you're in the right area when you spot a single "Tank Crossing" sign about a mile south of West Lavington, and glance across to the unassuming little single-track road bearing the notice of whether the roads through the village are open or not. "Not" is nearly always the answer - Imber's only open to public access on a handful of days every year..."

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Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Imber

You can read the All Experts Encyclopedia entry on Imber at:
http://en.allexperts.com/e/i/im/imber.htm

You will find 113 evocative photographs of Imber and Copehill Down FIBUA (Fighting In Built Up Areas) village on:
http://www.scottwylie.co.uk/ gallery/2317200#120928945_ MF6vY

Michael Daniels' family geneaology website is:
http://www.mdani.demon.co.uk/ family/danimber.htm

Send an Imber ecard on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ wiltshire/content/ecards/ imber_ecard.shtml

For English Heritage references to Salisbury Plain in the Imber area see:
http://www.imagesofengland. org.uk/details/default.aspx? id=313552

Wiltshire County Council's Community History website contains interesting information about Imber:
The Imber page "is one of 261 pages covering every community in Wiltshire, and is provided by Wiltshire County Council Libraries and Heritage. A project to provide a fuller picture of each community is in progress, working on the larger communities first. When these 261, which are modern civil parishes, are completed we will begin work on a further 180 villages and hamlets to provide comprehensive coverage of Wiltshire communities large and small."
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/ community/getcom2.php?id=125

Other Links

http://www.btinternet.com/~amesburywalkers/page28.html

http://www.flywestbury.freeuk.com/imber.htm

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/salisbury/gallery/grazing.asp

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/salisbury/news/list.asp

http://www.kirsty-carse.com/short_stories.shtml

http://www.thinctanc.co.uk/photography/index.html

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getcom.php?id=125

http://www.chitterne.com/history/hrfoiled.html

http://www.4x4web.co.uk/expedition/imber.html

http://www.ramblers-wilts.org.uk/ypg050820.htm

http://www.army.mod.uk/ate/public/salisplain.htm

http://www.timetravel-britain.com/07/April/imber.shtml