Monument record MBC44834 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, Boycott Farm, Welsh Lane.

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 Welsh Lane about 235 SE of Boycott Farm and centred at SP 66573 35840, the ammunition storage area comprises 12 rectangular buildings, each about 5 x 3 metres with 10 laid out with long sides parallel with the road and 2 laid out with long sides perpendicular of the road, over a distance of about 150 metres. 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 are not visible on aerial photographs taken in 1961, though they were likely to have been demolished by the mid-1950s (1-5).