Purbeck | Posted on May 14th, 2025 | return to news
Last resident of Tyneham – Dorset’s ghost village – dies
Peter Wellman, who was born and brought up in the village that was evacuated in 1943, has passed away aged 100.
Just before Christmas in 1943, the village of Tyneham near Lulworth on the Isle of Purbeck was evacuated to enable the army to extend its ranges – and the inhabitants were never allowed to return to their homes.
Now Peter Wellman, who last year made a final visit to see the place where he was born and brought up, has died aged 100. He is the last Tyneham resident to die.
Around 250 people from Tyneham and the valley farms were forced out, but promised they could return when Hitler had been seen off, but it didn’t happen.
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, passed away from pneumonia on 29 April in Swanage, not far from his boyhood home.
His daughter Lynne said: “Dad always loved Tyneham and he visited regularly until he had a fall a few years ago. He was delighted when we took him back last year.
“He loved talking to people there and telling them about the village and what life was like. He moved out of Tyneham before the war due to work, but not far away. Then in 1943, everyone was forced out.
“He had been living happily in Swanage and died peacefully in his sleep after suffering from pneumonia.”
On his last visit to Tyneham, Peter recalled his childhood: “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, whose family connections to Tyneham go back many generations and whose grandfather was the shepherd, attended the little single-room school.
He said he “scribbled like anyone else would”, and when the school closed in 1933 when he was nine, he spent several years attending another school by bus.
At 14, he started work on a nearby farm where he stayed for 36 years and then had a job in the clay industry until retirement.
Many of the villagers enjoyed long lives and Peter put it down to the lifestyle.
“Fresh air is the main thing,” he said, “and hard work with a good heart and a contented mind. That’s how you live.”
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.
“They were told they could come back,” he said, “but they were never allowed.”
Peter recalled 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.
The village was owned by the Bond family who lived in the grand Tyneham House that is now mostly gone.
They were resistant to modernity, meaning life in the village in 1943 was much like it had been a century earlier.
After a campaign led by campaigner Rodney Legg to allow the residents back, the MoD in 1975 permitted people to visit what was left, and it has become an increasingly popular place for day-trippers and tourists.
Peter was also the last person to speak with an authentic Tyneham valley voice, which has a rich, velvety Dorset burr.
Peter, a widower, had two children, two grandchildren, three great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.
Elise Neville from James Smith Funeral Directors, part of the Douch Family Funeral Group, who is arranging the funeral, said: “Peter is the last living link to the village of Tyneham and with him departs a piece of history.
“So many of the small communities in and around the Isle of Purbeck have families who go back many generations, and Peter’s is one of them. It is a great privilege to arrange Peter’s funeral.”
The funeral is in Corfe Castle on 22 May.
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