Abandoned Wiltshire: Copehill Down Military Village
Copehill Down is a rural village with a difference. It has a population of zero, but it isn’t abandoned. The architecture doesn’t quite match that of the quaint English villages nearby and there are no proper roads leading to the settlement.
Copehill Down is in fact a Ministry of Defence training village in Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. It is a Fighting In Built Up Areas (FIBUA) training centre, where military exercises and tests are conducted.
The village was purpose-built in 1987 to resemble a German village, in order to provide a simulated training environment suitable for troops to train for conflicts such as the Cold War, Northern Island and the Balkans.
Since then the facility has been expanded to include a shantytown made out of containers. It also contains an Iraqi section, though this is not visible from outside the boundaries and access is restricted.
Last Updated on 7 June 2022 by Michael
