Monument record MBC48648 - Second World War Prisoner of War camp, Quainton

A Second World War Prisoner of War camp is visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data and was mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located in a field W of the track called “Sandy Path” between Denham Cottage and Denham Lodge and centred at SP 75125 20486, the camp comprised a 62 metres long roadway leading W from Sandy Path to 7 military buildings, 3 of which are parallel aligned WNW-ESE and about 18 x 6 metres, accessed by a roadway and a path network, along with a camp sewage works some 200 metres away. The buildings would have provided accommodation, ablutions, heating and cookhouse facilities for the prisoners, as well as presumably an office/guardroom for camp administration. Aerial photographs taken in 1950 show the camp buildings unchanged, but by 1961 they had started to be demolished. By 1976, all the camp buildings and structures had been removed, but the concrete building platforms, some foundations and the roadway remain in place in 2025. Italian POWs occupied the camp until 1945 or 1946 (Quainton Railway Society 2017). Local people recount that families of the Italian POWs were later accommodated within nearby Denham House and the adjacent land used by them for food production. The Italians were subsequently replaced by German prisoners and then Romanians. The stepson of Mr E.M. D’Elia, an Italian POW at Quainton, is Romeo di Girolamo, a painter who became President of the Royal Society of British Artists. He painted a Chairman of Bucks County Council, James Ireland, rising from the land around Denham where his stepfather was held captive, with the POW camp buildings and boiler chimney in the lower right background (1-10)