Monument record MBC44821 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, Welsh Lane/Stowe to Water Stratford road crossroads.

A Second World War roadside ammunition dump is visible on historic aerial photographs and was mapped as part of the North Buckinghamshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18304). Clustered around the crossroads of Welsh Lane and the Stowe-Water Stratford road and centred at SP 66218 36153, the ammunition storage area comprises 24 rectangular buildings, 23 being each about 5 x 3 metres and 1 about 5 x 6.5 metres, laid out with long sides parallel to the roads. These portable corrugated iron shelters, or hutments, were usually camouflaged and covered stacks of artillery or small arms ammunition. Roadside storage not only made the ammunition easily accessible but dispersed the risk of a large loss of munitions in one event as a result of a German air raid. A contemporary account of a schoolboy at Stowe School recalls that there were stores of ammunition along the small local roads before D-Day. The munitions storage hutments are present on aerial photographs taken in 1946, but none are visible on aerial photographs taken in 1961 but were likely to have been demolished by the mid-1950s (1-5).