Didcot

The area around present-day Didcot has been inhabited for at least 9,000 years. A large archaeological dig between 2010 and 2013 produced finds from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age and Bronze Age.[3][4]

In the Roman era the inhabitants of the area tried to drain the marshland by digging ditches through what is now the Ladygrove area north of the town near Long Wittenham, evidence of which was found during surveying in 1994.[5] A hoard of 126 gold Roman coins dating from about AD 160 was found just outside the village in 1995 by an enthusiast with a metal detector. It is now displayed at the Ashmolean Museum on loan from the British Museum.[6][7]

The Domesday Book of 1086 does not record Didcot. In 13th-century records the toponym appears as Dudecota, Dudecote, Doudecote, Dudcote or Dudecothe. Some of these spellings continued into later centuries, and were joined by Dodecote from the 14th century onward, Dudcott from the 16th century onward and Didcott from the 17th century onward. It is derived from Old English, meaning the house or shelter of Dudda's people.[8][9] The name is believed to be derived from that of Dida, a 7th-century Mercian sub-king who ruled the area around Oxford and was the father of Saint Frithuswith or Frideswide, now the patron saint of both Oxford and Oxford University.[10]

All Saints' parish church, parts of which go back to the 12th century

Didcot was then a rural Berkshire village, and it remained so for centuries, only occasionally appearing in records. If Didcot existed at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, it will have been much smaller than several surrounding villages, including Harwell and Long Wittenham, that modern Didcot now dwarfs. The nearest settlement recorded in the Domesday Book was Wibalditone, with 21 inhabitants and a church, whose name possibly survives in Willington's Farm on the edge of Didcot's present-day Ladygrove Estate.[11]

The oldest parts of the Church of England parish church of All Saints go back to the 12th century. They include the walls of the nave and east wall of the chancel, which were built about AD 1160.[12] The church is a Grade II* listed building.[13]

White Cottage, the oldest house in Didcot

Parts of the original village survive in the Lydalls Road area around All Saints' church. In the 16th-century Didcot was a small village of landowners, tenants and tradespeople with a population of about 120.[14] The oldest surviving house in Didcot is White Cottage, a 16th-century timber-framed building in Manor Road that has a wood shingle roof. It is a Grade II listed building.[15]

At that time the village centre consisted of a group of cottages and surrounding farms around Manor, Foxhall and Lydalls Roads. Those still surviving include The Nook, Thorney Down Cottage and Manor Cottage, which were all built in the early to mid-17th century.[12] Didcot village was on the route between London and Wantage (now Wantage Road), which in 1752 was made a toll road. Didcot had three toll gates that collected revenue for the turnpike trust until 1879, when the trust was dissolved due to the growing use of the railway.[12]

View of the Didcot Power Station in 2005 from Platform 3 of Didcot Parkway. Three of the cooling towers in the distance were demolished in July 2014, the remaining three in August 2019.

The Great Western Railway, engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, reached Didcot in 1839. In 1844 the Brunel-designed Didcot station was opened. The original station burnt down in the late 19th century. Although longer, a cheaper-to-build line to Bristol would have been through Abingdon farther north, but the landowner the first Lord Wantage is reputed to have prevented that alignment.[16] The railway and its junction to Oxford assisted the growth of Didcot. The station's name helped to standardise the spelling "Didcot".

Didcot's junction of the routes to London, Bristol, Oxford and to Southampton via the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&S) made the town militarily important, especially during the First World War campaign on the Western Front and the Second World War preparations for D-Day. The DN&S line has since closed, and the large Army and Royal Air Force ordnance depots have disappeared beneath the power station and Milton Park Business Park; however the 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Regiment RLC is still based at the Vauxhall Barracks in the town.

The Northbourne Centre in High Street, built in 1890 as St Peter's parish church

Remains of the DN&S railway survive in the eastern part of town. This line, designed to provide a direct link to the south coast from the Midlands and the North avoiding the indirect and congested route via Reading and Basingstoke, was built in 1879–82 after previous proposals had failed. It was designed as a main line and was engineered by John Fowler and built by contractors TH Falkiner and Sir Thomas Tancred, who together also constructed the Forth Railway Bridge.[17]

It was a very costly line to build due to the heavy engineering challenges of crossing the Berkshire and Hampshire Downs with a 1 in 106 gradient to allow for higher mainline speeds, and this initial cost and the initially lower than expected traffic volumes caused the company financial problems. It never independently reached Southampton, but instead joined the main London and South Western Railway line at Shawford, south of Winchester.

Northbourne's First World War memorial, outside the new St Peter's church built in 1977

In the Second World War there was so much military traffic to the port of Southampton that the line was upgraded. The northern section between Didcot and Newbury was made double track. It was closed for 5 months in 1942–43 for this to be done. Several of the bridges in the area of Didcot and the Hagbournes were also strengthened and rebuilt.

Although passenger trains between Didcot and Newbury were withdrawn in 1962, the line continued to be used by freight trains for a further four years, and there was regular oil traffic to the north from the refinery at Fawley near Southampton. But in 1966 this traffic also was withdrawn, and the line was then dismantled. The last passenger train was a re-routed Pines Express in May 1964, diverted due to a derailment at Reading West. A section of the abandoned embankment towards Upton, now designated as a Sustrans route, has views across the town and countryside.[18]

As at 2011, Didcot had a population of more than 26,000.[1] The new town centre, the Orchard Centre, was opened in August 2005.[19] As part of the Science Vale Enterprise Zone, Didcot is surrounded by one of the largest scientific clusters in the United Kingdom. There are a number of major science and technology campuses nearby, including the Culham Science Centre, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, and Milton Park.[20] The Diamond Light Source synchrotron, based at the Harwell Campus, is the largest UK-funded scientific facility to be built for more than 30 years.[21]

Didcot has been designated as one of the three major growth areas in Oxfordshire; the Ladygrove development, to the north and east of the railway line on the former marshland, is set to double the number of homes in the town since construction began in the late 1980s. Originally, the Ladygrove development was planned to be complete by 2001, but the plans for the final section to the east of Abingdon Road were only announced in 2006.

A Thames Travel bus on route 98 on Greenwood Way in the new Great Western Park estate

Before the Ladygrove development was completed, a prolonged and contentious planning enquiry decided that a 3,200-home development would be built to the west of the town, partly overlapping the boundary with the Vale of White Horse.[22] This is now being built as Great Western Park.

In 2008 a new £8 million arts and entertainment centre, Cornerstone, was opened in the Orchard Centre. It has exhibition and studio spaces, a café and a 236-seat auditorium. Designed by Ellis William Architects, the centre is clad with silvered aluminium panels and has a window wall, used to connect the building with passing shoppers.[23]

The United Kingdom government named Didcot a garden town in 2015, the first existing town to gain this status, providing funding to support sustainable and environmentally friendly town development over the coming 15 years.[24]

Formed by the Great Western Society in 1967 to house its collection of Great Western Railway locomotives and rolling stock, housed in Didcot's 1932-built Great Western engine shed.[25] The Railway Centre is used as period film set and has featured in works including Anna Karenina, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and The Elephant Man.[26] The centre is north of Didcot Parkway railway station, and can be accessed from the station via the pedestrian subway.

The station was originally called Didcot but then renamed Didcot Parkway in 1985 by British Rail; the site of the old GWR provender stores, which had been demolished in 1976 (the provender pond was kept to maintain the water table) was made into a large car park to attract passengers from the surrounding area. An improvement programme for the forecourt of the station began in September 2012. This was viewed as being the first phase of better connecting the station to Didcot town centre.[27]

Aerial view of Didcot Power Stations A (centre) and B (extreme left)

Didcot A Power Station (between Didcot and Sutton Courtenay) ceased generating electricity for the National Grid in March 2013. Country Life magazine once voted the power station the third worst eyesore in Britain.[28]

Didcot Power Stations viewed from Wittenham Clumps

The power station cooling towers were visible from up to 30 miles (48 km) away because of their location, but were designed with visual impact in mind (six towers in two separated groups 0.5 miles (800 m) apart rather than a monolithic 3×2 block), much in the style of what is sometimes called Didcot's 'sister' station – Fiddlers Ferry Power Station – at Widnes, Cheshire, constructed slightly earlier. The power station had also proved a popular man-made object for local photographers.

In October 2010, Didcot Sewage Works became the first in the UK to produce biomethane gas supplied to the national grid, for use in up to 200 homes in Oxfordshire.[29]

On Sunday 27 July 2014 three of the six 114-metre (374 ft) cooling towers were demolished in the early hours of the morning, using 180 kilograms (400 lb) of explosives. The demolition was streamed live by webcam.[30]

On Tuesday 23 February 2016, part of the boiler house building collapsed at Didcot Power Station; one person was declared dead, five injured and three missing. All were believed to have been preparing the site for demolition.[31] On Sunday 17 July 2016, what remained of the structure was demolished in a controlled explosion. The bodies of the three missing men were still in the remains at that time. A spokesman said that because of the instability of the structure, it had not been possible to recover the three bodies. For safety reasons, robots were used to place the explosive charges, and the site was demolished just after 6 o'clock in the morning (BST).

On Sunday 18 August 2019, the remaining three cooling towers were demolished at 7am.[32]

Didcot has a strong connection with the Williams Grand Prix Engineering team as Frank Williams founded the team there in a former carpet warehouse in 1977.[33][34] After establishing themselves in Formula One, the factory, now including a small 'Williams Museum', moved within Didcot to a new factory on the Didcot A Power Station site on Basil Hill Road.[35] They stayed there until 1995 when they finally outgrew the site, moving to nearby Grove where they are based today. In 2012 a new road through the new Great Western Park development in Didcot was named Sir Frank Williams Avenue in honour of Williams' contribution to the town.[36]

The Didcot-built Williams FW06 from 1978, being raced at Silverstone in 2007

Didcot also hosts a Pirelli distribution and logistics centre which provides tyres for Formula One Grand Prix motor racing events across Europe.[37][38] Didcot's link to the automotive industry continued in 2015 when the head offices of the Bloodhound SSC team were moved to the new University Technical College (UTC) Oxfordshire site on the boundary between Didcot and Harwell. The team are aiming to break the world land speed record with their supersonic car.[39]

Opium poppies were being cultivated at Harwell in June 2009

Didcot is surrounded by farmland which has historically grown traditional British crops such as wheat and barley, sheep farming is also common in the area.[40] The area is also noted for farmers growing opium poppies for legal production of morphine and heroin to meet National Health Service demand.[41][42] The poppies produced are sold to Macfarlan Smith, a major pharmaceutical company, who hold a licence from the United Kingdom Home Office.[43]

From 2007 until 2017, the Daily Mail & General Trust had a printing plant in Didcot.[44][45]

Didcot Town Council maintains the following:[64]

• Edmonds Park
• Loyd Recreation Park
• Smallbone Recreation Park
• Garden of Remembrance
• Marsh Recreation Ground
• Great Western Drive Park
• Ladygrove Park and Lakes
• Ladygrove woods
• Ladygrove Skate Park
• Mendip Heights Play Area
• The Diamond Jubilee Garden
• Broadway Gardens
• Stubbings Land
• Millennium wood at the Hagbourne Triangle
• Cemetery, Kynaston Road

Didcot also has a nature reserve, Mowbray Fields, where wildlife including common spotted orchid and Southern Marsh Orchid occur.[65]