Monument record 0838200000 - NE of Norduck Farm

German prisoner of war camp (B1).
Described by the International Red Cross as a German Working Camp (Camp no.268) (B2).
Visible on 1947 and 1948 RAF vertical APs. 2 of the original buildings appear to have survived.
POW Camp 268 was established in the huts (left in 1945), and held about 250 prisoners. The prisoners constructed an ‘opera house’ or theatre for entertainment (B3).
A booklet of drawings of the camp stage sets for various productions is held in Aylesbury Record Office. Prisoner Werner Schaefer produced the booklet in 1945 (B4).

A Second World War Prisoner Of War camp is visible on historic aerial photograph and was mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located at Norduck Farm and centred at SP 83870 20299, the camp comprises 71 rectangular buildings of various sizes and orientation extending over 550 metre ENE from the farm, set out on either side of a 490 metres long linear road from which pathway link buildings. Also visible is what is likely to be a sewage works for the site. Before the camp was used as a POW camp, Czechoslovakian army guards were stationed in both tents and the Nissen huts, their function to guard the Czechoslovakian President in wartime exile, Edvard Benĕs, who lived nearby at the Abbey in Aston Abbotts. In 1945 the Czech military left the site and German POWs moved into tents and buildings in what became POW camp No. 268. The German POWs were employed locally at Calvert Brick Works (London Brick Co.), Newton Longville Brick Works (London Brick Co.), Marston Valley Brick Works and other such industrial sites as cement and gas works. They were subsequently repatriated. In February 1947 there were 1,655 POWs in the camp. Most of the buildings that were recorded in 1947 and still extant in 1948 have been demolished by 1949, with only their concrete platform bases visible. Only 6 building remain standing at the E end of the camp. By 1954 all evidence of the building platforms and paths have gone, as has the sewage works. By 1976 4 of the surviving buildings have been demolished, with the remaining 2 still standing on aerial photographs taken in 2022, along with the camp road (5-11).