The Village that time forgot

A weekend away visiting old friends in Dorset. Now for many, Dorset is rural tranquility , a county that is really detached from the pull of London and South East. Dorchester is definitely getting bigger and the Prince of Wales creation , Poundbury, will soon join up to form a conurbation if such a thing is possible amidst the rolling hills.

On Sunday we travelled to Tyneham , a village that time forgot. Now Tyneham was suffering from rural depopulation, the school house was closed in 1933 when there were only 9 pupils remaining. However in preparation for D-day , the government decided that all remaining inhabitants should move out in 1943. The assumption was that they would be allowed to return whenever the war ended. Sadly in 1945 the goivernment already making plans for the onset of the Cold War decided that the site was too valuable to the military, and it seems the inhabitants of Tyneham were effectively tossed to the wind. In 1943 these villagers who were mostly agricultual labourers, fishermen or people who worked in the "big house" received nothing in compensation.

The homes lacked basic amenities even by the standards of the time, there was no running water and no electricity. Yet there was a post office/village store and a church. Some years back the military decided to allow visitors to see the site at weekends. The houses are but shells, the schoolhouse has been restored and the church now serves as a small museum to the village sacrificed in order to defeat the Nazis.

On one level it was intriguing to see a place locked into another time, without the tourist trappings of today. A place where families main adventure came from nature , the fields and the beach. Yet at the same time one is left considering the plight of those whose lifes must have been turned upside down by a government decision never rescinded. Many people lost their homes in the second world war I know, but not many of them in the UK were taken away by the MOD.