Site of Second World War Ammunition Shelter, Memorial Playing Fields, St Osyth (EHER 21342)

Site of Second World War ammunition shelter, now destroyed.

Contemporary record state, “Storehouse for Explosives. Memorial Playing Fields. St. Osyth Village. Map ref. 566337.” (Mil. Ed.) <1> Defence of Tending survey site visit in 2009. The Memorial Playing Fields lie south of Mill Street, named after the war memorial which stands in a small, hedged garden in its NE corner. It is clear that virtually nothing has changed in this field since World War Two. An aerial photograph taken in July 1946 shows it as it is now. Tracking down the “Storehouse for Explosives”, something can be seen on the picture immediately alongside the west of the memorial garden, possibly a small building on a concrete base seen as white edging to a dark shape. <2> Typically, ammunition shelters were small Nissen huts on such a base and the image seen is of the “right” size. On the ground, there is a slightly raised area here in the grassland of the field. Boreholes revealed no underlying base. In the absence of any further evidence this is the NGR given above. At the time of writing (2009), the physical difference, if any, between the more usual “ammunition shelter” and “storehouse for explosives” is not known. Three photos of site. <3>