Author |
Message |
Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b
Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217
| Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:22 pm: | |
...aka 'The Village That Died For England.' This video's pretty haunting. Great music too... ('Von' by Sigur Ros.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caBOepufF-8 |
Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.86.142
| Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:27 pm: | |
Spellbinding stuff. |
Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b
Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217
| Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 10:57 am: | |
Cheers Mick! |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.229.8
| Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 12:58 pm: | |
Incredible that it should have been evacuated and used by the army as a shooting range. Outrageous. |
Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b
Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217
| Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 10:08 am: | |
Sadly not unique, Hubert. Imber in Wiltshire and Mynydd Epynt in Powys suffered similar fates. There's a good website here: http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/ Pretty fascinating. On Mynydd Epynt, I always find this passage poignant: 'Some of the residents attempted to maintain contact with Epynt, perhaps hoping that the war might end soon and it might be possible to return. Thomas Morgan from Glandwr used to slip back to his farm and light the fire to keep the house aired. One day he arrived to find his home in ruins. An army captain told him it had been blown up and he was not expected to come back again.' Bastards. |
Degsy (Degsy) Username: Degsy
Registered: 08-2010 Posted From: 86.134.93.9
| Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 11:05 pm: | |
When I lived in Durham I often used to visit the ruins of Houghall Colliery Village on the outskirts of the city. The pit closed in Victorian times but the final houses were only demolished in the 1950's. The sight of old doorsteps and bits of kitchen lino poking out from amongst the tree roots was weirdly unsettling, as if it was some relic from a thousand years ago. |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.234.108
| Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2010 - 01:58 am: | |
But whence the need to obliterate these tiny communities when (presumably) there was so much open space elsewhere? England is not as densely populated as, say, tiny Belgium. It reminds me of a similar evacuation in New England (Boston, wasn't it?) when the need for a water reservoir arose. |
Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam
Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74
| Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2010 - 04:14 am: | |
The purpose was to use a tiny hamlet in order to simulate door-to-door techniques which would be encountered in France, Italy, Holland, and the afore-mentioned Belgium. |