PART of the chalk downlands stretching over eastern and southern England, the 300 square miles of Salisbury Plain are sparsely populated.

Famous for its rich archaeological sites, including Stonehenge, the heart of this ancient landscape is an eerie and ambiguous space.

Its present sparsely populated state is because large areas have been occupied by the military since 1897 for war-games training.

One accidental result of this is that it has also become a haven for wildlife.

It is both Britain’s largest military training ground as well as a conservation area, shared with archaeologists, dog walkers, skylarks and corn buntings, wildflowers and rare wildlife.

Photographer Melanie Friend has spent many days traversing the plain and photographing its unique landscape but not simply for the beauty of its wide vistas, dramatic skies and constellations of trees.

She captures this unique landscape, scarred and impacted by military activity, in the incongruous contrasts between an apparently idyllic landscape with its tranquil scenery and peacefully grazing cattle with land mauled and marred by tank tracks, gun emplacements, smoke-filled horizons, targets and ruined houses.

No Access and Warning signs and red flags are encountered everywhere, like poisonous mushrooms sprouting from the short grass.

Her photographs reveal the military presence as a disquieting feature. Riven with contradictions and curiosities, the plain is the focus of her investigation of everyday militarisation, revealing how war is embedded in this most English of landscapes.

As vocal “responses” to her images, Friend uses quotations from a number of villagers who live on the plain and of military personnel who work there.

“The military is very embedded in this area, it always has been,” says Caroline Lanyon.

“As a CND campaigner, I have had to brace myself for conversations with soldiers and people connected with the military whenever I get out into the street.

“Some actually have been supportive towards getting rid of nuclear weapons but, on the whole, it’s been tough carrying on this kind of activity in such a heavily military area.

“The Plain holds in perfect tension the light and dark sides of the British landscape and deepens Friend’s engagement with landscape as a complex meeting ground of nature and state,” says Tate Britain’s senior photography curator Kate Bush.

“It is an important new work which confirms Melanie Friend as one of the leading landscape photographers today.”

The Plain by Melanie Friend is published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, £25.