So it should have come as no great surprise to find them knocking at their doors with possession orders. I say naïve, with no disrespect intended, but it was no secret that the War Office had been buying up farms and other properties in the area for some years since 1897 in fact. Perhaps the villagers were a little naïve when they accepted a promise from the War Office ensuring they would be allowed to return to their homes after the war. Today, Imber is a ghost village, requisitioned by the War Office in 1943, a move which saw a small community evicted from their homes on the grounds that the village was to be used for military manoeuvres by American troops in preparation for the D-Day landings of WWII. Imber appears in the Doomsday Book where an entry indicates a population of just fifty souls. Imber village lies in a valley of some three hundred square miles which make up Salisbury Plain, most of which is owned by the MoD. Imber, historians will tell you, was once home to the ancient Britons, the Romans and the Saxons.
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