Where do you find a bus service that runs once a year, through a military training area to serve a place where nobody lives? The answer to this unusual question is the abandoned village of Imber, nestled on its own in a valley the middle of Salisbury Plain.
Imber is an old village. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086^1 (albeit with just seven houses) and at its largest in 1851 had 440 inhabitants. By 1931 this number had fallen to just 152. It was an isolated little place, and unless you worked on the land here or provided services to those who did, there was little for you there. Travelling to Imber was not straightforward: a Mr Fred Maidment of Chitterne recounted to the Wiltshire News[^2] that it lay nine miles by road from the already lonely Gore Cross, and when he walked to Imber to preach became regularly fog-bound to the point that he would leave a lamp in one spot, carrying another one forward until he found a familiar landmark.
At around the turn of the century Imber had become hot property – the Ministry of Defence had been buying up land in and around the village, and by 1902 owned some 43,000 acres. They took advantage of the lean years of the twenties and thirties to acquire further areas of land, and by the outbreak of the second world war in 1939 owned the entirety of the village and its surrounds as part of the Salisbury plain training area.
In late 1943 the MoD issued its tenants in Imber with notice to quit, with the expectation that they would all have moved out by 17th December of that year. As with the similar possession of Tyneham in Dorset, the residents were promised that they could return after the war – and as with Tyneham this promise was never fulfilled.
Access to Imber is now permitted on only a few days each year, and one of these is dedicated to the gloriously bonkers Imberbus.
Imberbus was born from a pub chat between a group of bus industry managers on the subject of “where is the most unlikely place you could run a proper bus service?”, and started in 2009 with just four vehicles. Excepting a break for the ‘vid in 2020 it has operated every year since, managing a bumper run-out this year of some forty vehicles. Passengers can hop on and off at villages and hamlets like Chitterne, Tilshead, and Market Lavington, with Imber itself being the star attraction in the middle of this little one-day transport network. The buses run as a normal public service – no reservations are needed, you just show up and pay the conductor, and spend the day riding between remote hamlets, soaking up the scenery and the oddness of double-deckers traversing the military and very rural landscape, passing places with such evocative names as Brazen Bottom and New Zealand Farm.
Imberbus has built a friendly, almost festival feel, with stops at museums, local cafes, and church hall fundraisers along the way. The day runs entirely on volunteers, and proceeds go to the upkeep of St Giles Church in Imber and charities such as the Royal British Legion. Taking a trip on Imberbus is a like a visit to lost England—a nod to the past with Routemasters, across land where civilians very rarely tread.
Read more about Imber here and here. See more photos from my visits to Imberbus below, or check out these Flickr albums:
[^2]: Wiltshire News
17 December 1943
Image © Successor rightsholder unknown. Please contact us via support@britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk if you wish to claim rights to this title.. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
