Stolen From The People?
The unclassified road from Heytesbury to Imber crosses an ancient human landscape. But it is a lethal modern day landscape - UNEXPLODED ARTILLERY. DO NOT LEAVE THE CARRIAGEWAY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, The stark signs amidst the apparently empty landscape are chilling reminders that this is one of Britain's largest public exclusion zones and that the village of Imber is merely a shell, a ghost town. It is only on view to the public for a few days each year.
Stolen From the people? explores the desolation and ironic aspects of military land occupation around the country, discovering a strange unseen Britain.
As one of the largest occupiers of land in Britain, with 242,000 hectares of land, the Ministry of Defence is keen to point to the fact that in many training areas wildlife has benefitted through the total or partial exclusion of the public and modern agricultural methods. Their inadvertent protection of the landscape was a handy device for killing off "The Fight for Tyneham Campaign", a move by former reside.nts of the Dorset village to oust the military from what was their pretty corner of England. The military are still present in the Tyneham valley and the village itself is now a collection of ruins except for the church, which has survive to near misses from shells.
Further west on Dartmoor, organisations such as the RSPB and the Dartmoor Preservation Society find laughable any suggestion that a military presence is beneficial to the environment. After all, there was never a threat from modern farming on the barren plateau of northern Dartmoor, and the military are blamed for the erosion of peat deterring rare migratory birds from breeding.
In all, there are 204 sites of special scientific interest within MOD land and the military occupy some part of most of our National Parks, with the exception of Exmoor and the Norfolk Broads. The MOD even produce an annual magazine called Sanctuary which offers colourful stories of exercises being suspended while birds raise chicks within impact areas.
Stolen From the people? explores the desolation and ironic aspects of military land occupation around the country, discovering a strange unseen Britain.
As one of the largest occupiers of land in Britain, with 242,000 hectares of land, the Ministry of Defence is keen to point to the fact that in many training areas wildlife has benefitted through the total or partial exclusion of the public and modern agricultural methods. Their inadvertent protection of the landscape was a handy device for killing off "The Fight for Tyneham Campaign", a move by former reside.nts of the Dorset village to oust the military from what was their pretty corner of England. The military are still present in the Tyneham valley and the village itself is now a collection of ruins except for the church, which has survive to near misses from shells.
Further west on Dartmoor, organisations such as the RSPB and the Dartmoor Preservation Society find laughable any suggestion that a military presence is beneficial to the environment. After all, there was never a threat from modern farming on the barren plateau of northern Dartmoor, and the military are blamed for the erosion of peat deterring rare migratory birds from breeding.
In all, there are 204 sites of special scientific interest within MOD land and the military occupy some part of most of our National Parks, with the exception of Exmoor and the Norfolk Broads. The MOD even produce an annual magazine called Sanctuary which offers colourful stories of exercises being suspended while birds raise chicks within impact areas.
