Elegy to Imber - written and performed by Ruth Underwood and Paul Lennon in 2001

Born and raised on the open downs,
There are names on gravestones found,
Of bell-ringers and corn-threshers,
From Tinker's Barn to Barley Ground.

Ordnance Survey shows no trace,
But we have maps in our souls,
There are ley lines running through this place,
That you cannot deface.

So stand with your head in the breeze,
See the wheat fields waving,
This love is worth saving,
And apples still ripen on their trees.

- Ruth Underwood (2001)

RUTH UNDERWOOD passed away on 8th October 2015.
She will be sadly missed by both family and friends.
Service on 16th November at 2.00pm at St John's Evangelist Church, Pemberton Gardens, London N19 5RR.
No flowers but any donations to Oxfam.

Rare chance to visit Imber
9th December 2008
By Jill Harding
THERE will be a rare opportunity to visit St Giles Church in Imber as the abandoned village hosts a concert of carols and readings by candlelight.
Salisbury Ladies' Choir Babes and Ballads will be leading the singing, St Thomas's hand-bell ringers will provide the music and there will be a flute solo from Telemann performed by Ruth Underwood.
Mulled wine is available on arrival and the organisers ask people to dress warmly and take a torch.
The church has no electricity, heating or toilets. The concert is free but donations are welcome.
The carol concert takes place at 2.30pm on December 20.
Imber village can be approached via the vedette posts at Warminster, Gore Cross, Bratton and Heytesbury

Haunting lament for ghost village
30th August 2001
THE musician daughter of a former Amesbury peace campaigner has followed in her father's footsteps by composing a song that revives one of his most heart-felt causes.
Ruth Underwood, daughter of the late Austin Underwood, plans to sing the song she has written about Imber - the ghost village on Salisbury Plain - in the village on Saturday.
Former villagers and their descendants will be making their annual pilgrimage to Imber on that day to commemorate its evacuation in 1943, when the War Department took it over as a battle practice ground.
Despite promises, Imber was never handed back to the villagers and in 1961 Austin Underwood, then an Amesbury rural district councillor, led the first symbolic return to the deserted and decaying village.
"I am the same age now as my father was then," says Ruth (43).
Austin Underwood's campaign to bring Imber back to life failed, but he did secure concessions that the roads into the village should be opened to the public for 50 days a year and St Giles's Church should be opened once a year, on the first Saturday in September.
Ruth visited Imber with her family as a child and the ghost village still haunts her.
The idea for Song of the Open Downs came to her two weeks ago as she drove across Salisbury Plain back to London, where she now lives.
"I was driving along the road towards Imber," she explained.
"I stopped the car and just thought 'I need to write about this.' I had been thinking a lot about my Wiltshire roots recently.
"I started to sing the song in the car.
"Then when I got back to London, I looked at old archive photographs of Imber people and really entered into that world, and then finished the song the next day."
She got together with her friend and fellow musician Paul Lennon, whom her father used to teach at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury, and they spent seven hours recording and mixing the four-minute song in his recording studio.
Paul plays the bass guitar and Ruth provides vocals, piano and flute.
It remembers the people who once lived in Imber:
Ruth has included archive photographs of Imber and pictures by her father, an accomplished photographer, in the insert material of the CD of the song.
Her mother, Mary Underwood, has written the introduction. "Austin died in 1993 and till the end of his days he hoped that Imber would live again," it reads.