'Last resident' of Tyneham ghost village returns home
99 year old Peter Wellman lived there until 1943, when it was evacuated
The last person to have been born and raised in the now-deserted village of Tyneham in Dorset has made a final visit to his family home.
99 year old Peter Wellman was among residents evacuated from the village just before Christmas in 1943, to enable the army to extend its ranges.
Around 250 people from Tyneham and the valley farms were forced out, but promised they could return when Hitler had been seen off, but they were never allowed back.
While still on MoD land, the ruins of the village and the walk to the beach at Warbarrow Bay are open to the public for 160 days of the year and remain a moment in time that was frozen.
The school that Peter went to and the church at which attendance was mandatory have been restored, but the rest is decaying with time.
Peter, who was born in Tyneham in 1924, had attended the village’s annual memorial service until last year when he had a fall.
But his daughter Lynne and son Michael drove him back for a look around as the last remaining villager. Peter said:
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever come back, which is a shame. After Peggy died I am the last person to have been born and raised here.
“I do love it here and people are always very interested in hearing about what life was like. But we knew no different.
“We had no electricity, no mains gas and no running water – we had to pump that from near the church. There’s a tap there now.
“I remember going to the beach and fishing and we often had mackerel. We were happy until we got moved out.”
Peter said he didn’t regret leaving the village because there was little there for younger people, but would have liked the residents to return.
He recalls watching a dogfight in the sky above the fields he was working in during the war, and waving at the Spitfire pilot who downed an enemy plane.
Peter now lives in nearby Swanage with his family close by.
The widower, whose family lived in Tyneham for generations, has two children, two grandchildren, three great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren.