training sites were created in Britain in order to practise for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Northern France by allied forces in 1944. In 1943, in an area of the Common known as the Lion's Mouth, Canadian troops constructed a replica of a section of the Atlantic Wall. It is constructed from reinforced concrete and was used as a major training aid to develop and practise techniques to breach the defences of the French coast prior to the D-Day landings. The wall is about long, high by wide. It is divided into two sections between which there were originally steel gates. Nearby are other obstacles such as dragon's teeth, reinforced concrete blocks and lengths of railway track set in concrete and with wire entanglements. Many of the relics show signs of live weapons training and the main wall has two breaches caused by demolition devices including the Double Onion: a specialised demolition vehicle, one of Hobart's Funnies, based on the Churchill tank. The reinforced concrete was made with rebars varying from thick. Over the years the wall has become colonised by alkaline-loving lichens, mosses, ferns and other plants because the concrete provides the lime-based substrate that these species require and which is found nowhere else in the locality. They present an unusual range of plants to be found in an expanse of acid heathland. The preservation of the Wall is managed by Army Training Estates with the assistance of the MOD Hankley Conservation Group.
Golf course
Hankley Common is home to one of Britain's popular golf courses. Hankley Common Golf Club opened in 1897 with nine holes and was expanded to eighteen holes in 1922.
Film and television
Hankley Common has been used in Hollywood blockbuster movies and TV shows. Hankley Common was used in the James Bond filmsThe World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day. The sets depicted a pier in the Caspian Sea where James Bond was attacked by a helicopter saw, a chase scene through the Korean Demilitarized Zone on hovercraft. It was also used in Skyfall as the site of James Bond's ancestral Scottish mansion and the infamous Church scene with Judi Dench as M. Hankley Common was used in 2014 for large numbers of scenes for the film Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Filming began on the Common in early-mid 2019 for Matthew Vaughan’s The King’s Man. In April 2019, filming began for the was war epic 1917 as a French battle ground. In 2019, Marvel blockbuster Black Widow, with a budget of $200 million, starring Scarlet Johannson, Rachel Weisz, Florence Pugh and David Harbour, shot numerous scenes over a 3 month period from June-August. Among others, scenes depicted a multi-vehicle car chase, helicopter crash, bunker and destroyed buildings. Hankley Common has been popular with fictional time travellers having featured in Doctor Who and the Silurians and in Blackadder Back and Forth. In the fourth series of Ultimate Force, the Drop Zone huts and surrounding area were used to shoot a Colombian forces training camp.
Bossom air crash
In July 1932 a Puss Moth aircraft carrying Mrs. Emily Bossom, Bruce Bossom, the American wife and eldest son of politician Alfred Bossom, and Count Otto Erbach-Fürstenau, broke up in mid-air. At least two of the occupants fell to the ground on Hankley Common. The sites where they fell are marked with memorial stones.
In September 1942, Hankley Common was the site of a murder. The victim was a woman who was living rough in a crude shelter made of tree branches in the manner of a wigwam, thus leading her to become known among locals as "the Wigwam Girl" and the murder case itself to be known as "the Wigwam Murder". She was eventually identified as 19-year-old Joan Pearl Wolfe.
