Copehill Down is situated on Salisbury Plain in the English county of Wiltshire. Built on the windswept chalk plateau it looks, at a cursory glance, a peaceful and welcoming place. Stonehenge is just a short drive away and the area around it is rich with history. Yet look again and you get the feeling that something isn’t quite right. Where are the people? And the houses – the architecture doesn’t look quite as English as perhaps it should.
Copehill Down is a sleepy English village with a difference. No one lives there. No children play in the neat gardens around the houses. No worshipers go to mass on a Sunday at Saint Jude’s church. The village is a mock-up or, more accurately, a FIBUA – an acronym standing for Fighting in Built Up Areas. The pictures you will see here are closer than most people will ever get to the village as civilian access to Copehill Down is generally restricted.
