Monument record 0661000000 - E of Weedon Hill Farm

World War 2 Control Station for Pipelines Under The Ocean (PLUTO). Laid across the channel immediately after D-Day to take petrol to the army and RAF in France. Station now dis-used (B1).
'Pumping Station' marked on 6-inch Provisional Revised edition OS map of 1944-1953; 'Pumping Station (disused)' marked on 1981 1:10,000 OS map and on modern OS MasterMap (B2).
Operation Pluto involved the construction of fuel oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France. Following testing of prototypes in 1942, in 1944 a 1,600km network of pipelines was constructed across-country to transport oil from ports including Liverpool and Bristol to the Isle of Wight and Dungeness on the south coast. The undersea sections were laid in just 10 hours and came ashore in France at Cherbourg and Ambleteuse. The pipeline eventually extended as far as the Rhine (B3).

A Second World War PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) site is visible on historic aerial photographs and was mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located in a field about 860 metres W of Weedon Hill Farm and centred at SP 80699 16344, PLUTO was designed to supply fuel from storage tanks in southern England to the Allied armies in France. A 750 metres long trackway leads from the A413 road to the site which is surrounded by a concrete posted security fence the site, within which is a number of buildings and structures, the precise functions of which are unclear, but likely included office, toilet, generator room and pump buildings. By 1961, some of the structures and earthworks have been levelled or demolished. The site appears to remain undisturbed until between 1976 and 1993, when further structures are demolished. Increasingly heavy foliage and secondary woodland growth of the site obscures the remaining features, but a visit by an amateur military enthusiast in 2023, aerial photographs dated to 2020 and recent remote sensing data suggest that the buildings and many structures remain extant within the dense undergrowth (4-12).