Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Original Out of Bounds church
Surrounded by a 10ft chain fence, a locked gate and “out of bounds” notices the church opens for just one service a year. The vicar is fed up with the time it involves and the local parishes want rid of the burden of maintaining it.
The Church of St. Giles is the parish church for the ghost town of Imber, an isolated village on Salisbury plain was requisitioned by the War Office a week before Christmas 1943, and the area made permanently out of bounds to the public.
Posted by steve at 03:55 PM
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That is just so sad:(
What about all the people who had mothers, fathers, babies, siblings and so on, buried in the graveyard? All very well for them to close the church, but those people still have 60 years of exclusion from their place of mourning. 60 years of exclusion from community, from their shared history. Where did they all go? Where are they now?
Isn’t it just like the displaced people in refugee camps all over the world? Some of them were told they could come back “if”, or “when” as well.
And how does it relate to the body of the church today? Real food for thought. What is there that isolates people from their sense of shared history and Christian community?
Thanks for passing this story on, Steve.
Comment by Larraine — January 26, 2005 @ 7:34 pm