Monument record MBC44838 - A Second World War roadside ammunition dump, A422 road, Buffler’s Holt.

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 off the A422 about 400 metres E of the Robin Hood public house at Buffler’s Holt and centred at SP 67049 35115, the ammunition storage area comprises 12 rectangular buildings, 7 about 5 x 3 metres with long sides perpendicular to the NE facing side of the road, and 5 about 7 x 3 metres with long sides parallel to the SW facing side of the road, all over a distance of about 78 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).