Monument record 0620103000 - WING AIRFIELD: Second World War Royal Air Force camp (Communal Site)

Visible on Aps from 1948 and shown as more extensive than present day with smaller clusters of Nissan huts at the outer edges of the field and paths leading two and from (1, 2). Possibly the training centre for the airbase?

A Second World War Royal Air Force camp (Communal Site) from nearby RAF Wing 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 295 metres SSE of Acorn Farm and centred at SP 85921 22150, the Communal Site camp comprises an officers’ mess, officers bath house, sergeants mess, sergeants showers and ablutions, airmens dining room and cinema, a ration store, the Airmans Institute and NAAFI, a grocery store, a tailors, barbers and shoemakers shop, a gymnasium, airmens showers and ablutions, airmens latrines, a decontamination centre, a squash court, a standby set house, fuel compound, the Commanding Officer’s quarters and garage, the post office, WAAF ablutions and quarters, an auxiliary fire equipment building, a large static water tank, a picket post (sentry box) and 22 brick-built open-topped and earth-bermed blast shelters, all linked by a pathway system and reached by an access road. Still under construction in February 1942, the completed camp remained almost intact in 1949, with just three buildings having been demolished. However, almost all remaining buildings and structures have been demolished and levelled by 1961, except for the Airmens Institute/NAAFI buildings, the grocery store, the airmens dining room (mess)/cinema and the gymnasium, which all remained extant in 1976. However, the main mess/cinema building was then demolished by 2003 and the main NAAFI building demolished between 2009 and 2017. On aerial photographs taken in 2022, the main camp road, gymnasium, grocers store and the smaller of the NAAFI buildings remain extant (3-12).