Monument record MBC44824 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, Stowe to Water Stratford road.

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). Located on both sides of the Stowe-Water Stratford road and centred at SP 66459 36469, the ammunition storage area comprises 12 rectangular buildings, each about 5 x 3 metres. On the NW facing side of the road 6 are laid out in 3 pairs with long sides perpendicular to the road, spaced over about 42 metres and surrounded by what appears to be a barbed wire entanglement. On the SE facing side of the road 6 are laid out in 2 pairs and 2 singly with long sides perpendicular to the road, spaced over about 38 metres and also surrounded by barbed wire. 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 neither buildings nor barbed wire was visible on aerial photographs taken in 1961 though were likely to have been demolished by the mid-1950s (1-5).