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Trees, grass, and weeds reclaimed the land.
#ABANDONED LIFE AS A MERCHANT RELICS WINDOWS#
Since then, the roofs and upper floors have collapsed the doors and windows fallen out. We will return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly." "Please treat the church and houses with care. They'd lived with the dread of German invasion for four years, but the army that actually made them refugees was their own.Īs they departed, one of them pinned a note to the church door: Within weeks they had packed up and left their lush Dorset valley. The note assured them this was "in the National Interest" and hoped they would make this "no small sacrifice" with "a good heart". In November, that year, residents received letters from the War Department ordering them to leave within a month. With a large base nearby, already, its eyes quickly and easily fell on the quiet settlement by the sea. The British military urgently needed more land for tank training and manoeuvrs. It was late 1943 and the tide of the Second World War was turning. Then, one day, its long, unremarkable history stopped dead.
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For more than a thousand years, its residents had eked out a precarious living from land and nearby sea. Its roots stretch back before that great watershed of British history, the Norman Conquest of 1066. Baking in a Mediterranean-like heatwave, the ruins do have the feel of an archaeological site, an ancient settlement that had met an apocalyptic end.Īnd in a way, that's exactly what happened to Tyneham. "This is like Pompeii!" my young son exclaims, as we stand in front of what had once clearly been a row of cottages.īut now only the shells remain. At its bottom, Tyneham peeps out from behind a cloak of trees. The first glimpse of this tiny Dorset village is from the long, steep road that takes you from sweeping views of the coast down into a small, wooded valley. TYNEHAM, England - Explore Britain's southern coast carefully enough and you can still find relics of the dark years when the country awaited Nazi invasion: abandoned radar stations tank-traps lost in farmers' fields half-hidden concrete bunkers overlooking wide, shingle beaches.