Langford

Name: Langford
Reason for desertion: Military Training
Period of desertion: 1940s

For the Langford DMV in Nottinghamshire, click here.

Langford has an entry in the Domesday Book of 1085, in which it is recorded as Langaforde. The main landholder is named as Hugh de Montfort and the survey also states that there are two mills, a fishery and two beehives.

St Andrew, Langford

The village was evacuated in 1944 and became part of a military training ground. The villagers gave up their homes as part of the war effort. The War Office needed a zone to train troops for the Battle of Normandy, which eventually led to the end of the Second World War in Europe. The villagers evacuated willingly, and at the time it was reported that there was cheering at the public meeting at which the evacuation was announced, although this is conjecture. It has never become clear if the people involved were aware that they were never to return to their homes. Most of the inhabitants were not landowners. Many of the buildings were tied cottages belonging to the Walsingham estate. Few of the houses had running water and none of the properties had electricity. The land that surrounded the village was of a poor quality and the villagers struggled to make a living from it. After the evacuation most of the families were re-housed locally in better accommodation in the nearby towns of Swaffham, Thetford and Watton.

The parish church is a very simple affair made up of two cells which date from the Norman period. The church once had a medieval tower, but this was lost some time in the 18th century. The bell turret is late Victorian which has been built in a Norman style. The eaves of the church have curious carved faces on the east elevation, a grinning cat to the south, a wild man to the north.

A note on the Stanford Battle Area


Stanford Battle Area, also known as the Stanford Training Area (STANTA), is a British Army infantry training area situated in the English county of Norfolk. The area is approximately 30,000 acres (120 km2) in size, and is situated some 7 miles (11 km) north of the town of Thetford and 25 miles (40 km) south-west of the city of Norwich.

The area was originally established in 1942 when a battle training area was required. Military exercises were already known in the area; tanks had trained at Thetford in the First World War. The complete takeover involved the evacuation of the villages of Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Stanford, Sturston, Tottington and West Tofts.

The area was used during the run-up to the D-Day invasion and since then has hosted many exercises. A regular visitor is 16 Air Assault Brigade who hold their annual Gryphon exercises there..

Sources: norfolkchurches.co.uk