Monument record MBC44835 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, Stonepit Hill Spinney, 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 the west facing Welsh Lane on the edge of Stonepit Hill Spinney and centred at SP 66726 35700, the ammunition storage area comprises 3 rectangular buildings, each about 5 x 3 metres laid out with long sides perpendicular of the road, over a distance of about 40 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 due to woodland canopy cover. They are not present on aerial photographs taken in 1969, though they were likely to have been demolished by the mid-1950s (1-6).