(Image: Nick; the abandoned rectory in Tyneham, Dorset)
A month before Christmas of 1943, the residents of a tiny village in Dorset, England, received what must have been a very traumatic letter. Their village on the Isle of Purbeck was a matter of “national interest”, and the 225 residents had just over a month to gather their belongings and relocate. The area around Tyneham was needed for training soldiers and testing military machinery. Those who lived there had no choice but to leave.
(Image: Nick; the rectory before the requisition of Tyneham)
Residents, who accepted the requisition of their homes as part of their patriotic duty, were promised by the authorities that they would one day be allowed to return to their village. But that never happened. No one ever returned, and the village of Tyneham now stands as a ruined World War Two time capsule.
(Image: Antony McCallum; ruins of the Gould family home)
Highlighting the ill-fated village in its Local History pages, the BBC writes that in spite of repeated attempts to return the village to the control of its displaced residents, Tyneham has remained in the hands of the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
(Image: Bing Maps; Tyneham ghost village from above)
But even if residents had been able to return, the war years had taken their toll on the Dorset village, and most of the cottages were no longer safe for habitation. Today, the ghost village remains a part of the British Army’s Lulworth Ranges, a pretty landscape blighted by the wrecked carcasses of abandoned tanks and other military targets.
(Image: Damien Everett; abandoned tank target on the Lulworth Ranges)
From the mid-1970s, complaints from locals led to the village and a network of footpaths across the firing ranges being opened to the public at weekends, an eerie reminder of the wartime sacrifices made by those on the home front.
(Image: Damien Everett)
Those who visited the Dorset ghost village were greeted by the ruins of structures that had been ravaged by wartime shelling, while decades of inhospitable weather and neglect had also taken their toll. Tyneham’s Elizabethan manor house had been demolished by the British government in 1967 and its characteristic cottages were reduced to empty, roofless shells.
(Image: Tuuraan78; St Mary’s Church)
Not all the buildings in Tyneham, however, fell into dereliction. The school house (which was actually closed in 1932) still stands as if its pupils have simply gone home for the evening, and the village’s Church of St Mary has been turned into a museum.
It was on the door of the church that one departing resident left a patriotic and poignant note for the military men who would be moving in as they moved out. It read:
Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.
(Image: David Merrett)
It remains to be seen whether that day ever arrives. However, Tyneham’s wartime and later military role wasn’t the only time that demolition came calling. When the 1986 historical drama Comrades will filmed there, Tyneham’s original 1929 K1 telephone kiosk was reportedly destroyed. The one that stands in the village today is understood to be a replacement.
Related – Battle Grounds: 6 Ghost Villages Urban Explorers Should Avoid
The post Tyneham: Dorset’s Ruined World War Two Ghost Village appeared first on Urban Ghosts Media.