Britain

Our work asks the bigger questions posed by the project of military sites in the UK, focusing on case studies of military training estates in the South West of England and Wales. In line with the overall project’s wider focus, research on Britain addresses a central paradox in the war-environment relationship: how militarized landscapes can become unexpected refuges for animals and plants and consciously managed as conservation sites often superior in natural value to non-militarized lands.

We are particularly interested in examining two central ideas:

• Firstly, at a more general level, we examine how and why the MoD has embraced environmental policies in the period since the publishing of the Nugent Report in 1973. We are particularly interested in the developing of conservation policies, the co-ordination of site specific Conservation Groups (first set up in 1974), and the ways in which the Defence Estates have advertised their environmental credentials, through, for example, the pages of Sanctuary. We seek to critically examine the contention that the “greening” of the MoD is primarily a means of legitimating military control of a substantial portion of national territory. We also explore MoD efforts to implement the Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000 and increase public access to Defence Estate land.

• Secondly, we specifically examine the so-called ‘ghost villages’ of Tyneham, Imber and the Epynt on three training areas in South West England and Wales. We are particularly interested in the ‘after-lives’ of these communities requisitioned by the military during the Second World War. In particular, how have those from within these communities, and others, narrated a sense of loss? What has the MoD done, and said, about these places and how has public access to these places been negotiated? How, when, and why has Tyneham (rather than Imber and farmhouses on the Epynt) been ‘museumified’?