Monument record MBC44837 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, Guernsey 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 W facing side of Welsh Lane opposite Guernsey Hill Spinney (now clear felled) and centred at SP 66810 35447, the ammunition storage area comprises 6 rectangular buildings, each about 5 x 3 metres laid out in 3 pairs with long sides perpendicular to the road, each pair separated by about 10 metres over a distance of about 44 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).