LONDON LETTER:THE LETTERS from Maj Gen C H Miller, delivered on November 17th, 1943, by the local postman on his bicycle from nearby Creech, came without notice to the village of Tyneham-cum-Steeple in Dorset. Since the days of William the Conqueror, people had lived there quietly, little noticed by others. Within a month of the letter, they had obeyed the order to quit their homes, writes MARK HENNESSY
Tyneham, known ever since as the Forgotten Village, had been chosen by the military, who desperately needed to expand the artillery firing ranges at Lulworth for the hundreds of thousands of British and American troops then stationed in the south of England, preparing for the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June the following year.
“In order to give our troops the fullest opportunity to perfect their training in the use of modern weapons of war, the army must have an area of land particularly suited to their special needs and in which they can use live shells. For this reason you will realise the chosen area must be cleared of all civilians,” the general wrote.
“The most careful search has been made to find an area suitable for the army’s purpose and which, at the same time, will involve the smallest number of persons and property.
“The government appreciate that this is no small sacrifice which you are asked to make, but they are sure that you will give this further help towards winning the war with a good heart.”
The 252 villagers left quietly, believing they would be back.
Before leaving, they pinned a notice to the door of St Mary’s Church: “Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day, and thank you for treating the village kindly.”
However, they never did, following the military’s decision to hold on to the 7,500 acres once the guns finally went quiet in Europe.
Today, Tyneham still stands, preserved much as it was before the doors closed in December 1943. Still standing in the middle of a firing range, it has occasionally been used as as a film set to portray a bucolic England now past.
Because they were tenants of the local gentry, the Bond family, Tyneham’s inhabitants had little power to fight the bureaucracy after war’s end, but they tried, complaining furiously to the War Office that their cottages had been allowed to deteriorate, their fields to run wild, while gunners had damaged the church’s steeple with their shelling.
The protests were in vain. In 1947, the War Office ruled that the lands were to be bought outright from the landlord by compulsory purchase order. Now livid, the villagers protested once more, forcing the authorities to set up a public inquiry, but it eventually ruled that while “some promises” of return had been made, they had to be overridden in the national interest.
In the end, the only compensation they received was for the vegetables growing in the small gardens behind the single line of thatched cottages that runs down to the medieval church. Many people were housed, with electricity and indoor plumbing, on a new council estate called Tyneham Close at Sandford, near Wareham. Some were happy. Many pined for a life that was no more.
In the early 1960s, the ministry of works demolished Tyneham House, a gabled, three-storey Elizabethan mansion of grey Purbeck ashlar, which, in its glory days, boasted grand mullioned windows overlooking manicured lawns and a majestic avenue of lime trees. Candlelight vigils were held to save it, but it, too, fell.
In a bid to appease local feeling, the army decided to ban shelling on certain days, and allowed visitors in. A car park was built, and picnic tables added.
Ironically, the old school that villager Arthur Grant attended until he left for a life at sea at age 13 has been restored. It houses an exhibition on Tyneham’s history and the area’s importance as a protected natural habitat.
Having joined the Union Castle shipping line in 1938, Grant served on troop carriers during the war, and was injured during a U-boat attack off the Northern Irish coast. On shore leave, he met Dorothy Grace Rawles, and they married in 1953.
A year later, he was a member of the air crew that flew Queen Elizabeth to Australia in 1954. Later, he became a much-loved local newspaper photographer.
The last of the Tyneham villagers, he died last week. On Monday, his ashes were spread – with the permission of the ministry of defence – in St Mary’s graveyard by his wife, Grace, children Geoff, Annette, Tanya and Mike, along with his grandchildren Jamie-Lee, Saffron and Poppy.
Seven decades on, he has finally come home.