| Didcot | |
|---|---|
| Town | |
 Didcot town centre, including the modern art installationThe Swirl | |
  Didcot Location withinOxfordshire | |
| Area | 8.48 km2 (3.27 sq mi) |
| Population | 32,183 (2021 Census)[1] |
| • Density | 3,795/km2 (9,830/sq mi) |
| OS grid reference | SU525900 |
| • London | 88.0 km (54.7 miles) |
| Civil parish |
|
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Didcot |
| Postcode district | OX11 |
| Dialling code | 01235 |
| Police | Thames Valley |
| Fire | Oxfordshire |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| UK Parliament | |
| Website | Didcot Town Council |
| |
Didcot (/ˈdɪdkɒt,-kət/DID-kot, -kət) is arailway town andcivil parish inSouth Oxfordshire, England, located 15 miles (24 km) south ofOxford, 10 miles (16 km) east ofWantage and 15 miles (24 km) north west ofReading. Historically part ofBerkshire, the town is noted for its railway heritage,Didcot station opening as ajunction station on theGreat Western Main Line in 1844.
Today the town is known for therailway museum and as the gateway town to the Science Vale: three large science and technology centres in the surrounding villages of Milton (Milton Park), Culham (Culham Science Centre) and Harwell (Harwell Science and Innovation Campus which includes theRutherford Appleton Laboratory).
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 theMesolithic,Neolithic,Iron Age andBronze Age.[2][3] In theRoman 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 nearLong Wittenham, evidence of which was found during surveying in 1994.[4] A hoard of 126 goldRoman coins dating from about 160 was found just outside the village in 1995 by an enthusiast with a metal detector. It is now displayed at theAshmolean Museum on loan from theBritish Museum.[5][6]
TheDomesday Book of 1086 does not record Didcot. In 13th-century records thetoponym appears asDudecota,Dudecote,Doudecote,Dudcote orDudecothe. Some of these spellings continued into later centuries, and were joined byDodecote from the 14th century onward,Dudcott from the 16th century onward andDidcott from the 17th century onward. It is derived fromOld English, meaning the house or shelter of Dudda's people.[7][8] The name is believed to be derived from that ofDida, a 7th-centuryMercian sub-king who ruled the area around Oxford and was the father of SaintFrithuswith or Frideswide, now the patron saint of both Oxford andOxford University.[9]
Didcot was then a ruralBerkshire village, and it remained so for centuries, only occasionally appearing in records. If Didcot existed at the time of theDomesday Book in 1086, it will have been much smaller than several surrounding villages, includingHarwell andLong Wittenham, that modern Didcot now dwarfs. The nearest settlement recorded in the Domesday Book wasWibalditone, with 21 inhabitants and a church, whose name possibly survives in Willington's Farm on the edge of Didcot's present-day Ladygrove Estate.[10] The oldest parts of theChurch of England parish church ofAll Saints go back to the 12th century. They include the walls of thenave and east wall of thechancel, which were built about 1160.[11] The church is aGrade II* listed building.[12]
Parts of the original village survive in the Lydalls Road area aroundAll Saints' church. In the 16th-century Didcot was a small village of landowners, tenants and tradespeople with a population of about 120.[13] The oldest surviving house in Didcot is White Cottage, a 16th-centurytimber-framed building in Manor Road that has awood shingle roof. It is aGrade II listed building.[14] 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.[11] Didcot village was on the route betweenLondon andWantage (now Wantage Road), which in 1752 was made atoll road. Didcot had threetoll gates that collected revenue for theturnpike trust until 1879, when the trust was dissolved due to the growing use of the railway.[11]
TheGreat Western Railway, engineered byIsambard Kingdom Brunel, reached Didcot in 1839. In 1844 the Brunel-designedDidcot station was opened. The original station burnt down in the late 19th century. Although longer, a cheaper-to-build line toBristol would have been throughAbingdon farther north but the landowner, the firstLord Wantage, is reputed to have prevented that alignment.[15] The railway and its junction toOxford assisted the growth of Didcot. The station's name helped to standardise the spelling "Didcot".
Didcot's junction of the routes toLondon,Bristol,Oxford and toSouthampton via theDidcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&S) made the town militarily important, especially during theFirst World War campaign on theWestern Front and theSecond World War preparations forD-Day. The DN&S line has since closed, and the largeArmy andRoyal Air Forceordnance depots have disappeared beneath the power station andMilton Park Business Park; however the11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Regiment RLC is still based at theVauxhall Barracks in the town.
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 routeviaReading andBasingstoke, was built in 1879–82 after previous proposals had failed. It was designed as a main line and was engineered byJohn Fowler and built by contractors TH Falkiner and Sir Thomas Tancred, who together also constructed theForth Railway Bridge.[16] It was a very costly line to build due to the heavy engineering challenges of crossing theBerkshire andHampshire 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 reachedSouthampton, but instead joined the mainLondon and South Western Railway line atShawford, south ofWinchester.
In theSecond World War there was so much military traffic to the port ofSouthampton 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 andNewbury 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 atFawley near Southampton. But in 1966 this traffic was also withdrawn, and then the line was dismantled. The last passenger train was a re-routedPines Express in May 1964, diverted due to a derailment atReading West. A section of the abandoned embankment towardsUpton, now designated as aSustrans route, has views across the town and countryside.[17]
As at 2011, Didcot had a population of more than 26,000, and by 2021, the population had grown to more than 31,000.[18] 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 theCulham Science Centre,Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, andMilton Park.[20] TheDiamond Light Sourcesynchrotron, 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. Before the Ladygrove development was completed, a prolonged and contentious planning enquiry decided that a 3,300-home development would be built to the west of the town, partly overlapping the boundary with theVale of White Horse.[22] This is now known asGreat 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 agarden 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] In 2017, researchers named Didcot as the most "normal" town in England.[25]
Formed by the Great Western Society in 1967 to house its collection ofGreat Western Railway locomotives and rolling stock, housed in Didcot's 1932-built Great Western engine shed.[26] The Railway Centre is often used as period film set and has featured in works includingAnna Karenina,Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows andThe Elephant Man.[27] The centre is north ofDidcot Parkway railway station, and is accessed from the station via the pedestrian subway.
The station was originally called Didcot but then renamedDidcot Parkway in 1985 byBritish 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.[28]
Didcot A Power Station (between Didcot andSutton Courtenay), which was commissioned in 1968, ceased generating electricity for theNational Grid in March 2013.Country Life once voted the power station the third worst eyesore in Britain.[29] The power stationcooling towers were visible from up to 30 miles (48 km) away[citation needed] 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 – atWidnes, Cheshire, constructed slightly earlier. The power station had also proved a popular man-made object for local photographers.[citation needed]
In October 2010, Didcot Sewage Works became the first in the UK to producebiomethane gas supplied to the National Grid, for use in up to 200 homes in Oxfordshire.[30] 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.[31] On Tuesday 23 February 2016, part of the boiler house building at the power station collapsed; one person was declared dead, five injured and three missing. All were believed to have been preparing the site for demolition.[32] 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 6am. On Sunday 18 August 2019, the remaining three cooling towers were demolished at 7am.[33]
Didcot has a strong connection withmotorsports and most notably theWilliams Grand Prix Engineering team asFrank Williams founded the team there in a former carpet warehouse on Station Road in 1977.[34][35] After establishing themselves inFormula One, the factory, now including a small 'Williams Museum', moved within Didcot to a new factory adjacent to theDidcot A Power Station site on Basil Hill Road.[36] They stayed there until 1995 when they finally outgrew the site, moving to the former Jansen Pharmaceutical site in nearbyGrove where they are still based today. After Williams Grand Prix Engineering's departure, the site was used for the design and production of the BMW V12 LM and BMW V12 LMR sports prototype racing cars, a joint collaboration between Williams and BMW which would go on to win the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans.[37] During the 1990s Williams also ran their joint British Touring Car Championship effort with Renault; Williams Touring Car Engineering from a warehouse on Churchward on the Southmead Industrial Estate in Didcot.[38] In 2012 a road through the new Great Western Park development in Didcot was namedSir Frank Williams Avenue in honour of Williams' contribution to the town.[39]
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Rich's Sidings in Didcot was home to Maxperenco, a racing car manufacturer run by Andrew Duncan who produced both Single-Seater Formula cars and GT Sports cars.[40]
During the 1980s and 1990s the Southmead Industrial Estate in Didcot was also home to Nissan Motorsports' Europe headquarters where they raced Nissan Primera touring cars in the British Touring Car Championship.[41] This would go on to becomeTeam RJN who are still based on the Southmead Industrial Estate to this day.[42]
More recently, Didcot is home to aPirelli distribution and logistics centre which provides tyres forFormula OneGrand Prix motor racing events across Europe.[43][44] In 2015 the head offices of theBloodhound LSR land speed record attempt team were moved to the new University Technical College (UTC) Oxfordshire site on the boundary between Didcot andHarwell. In 2019 the team relocated to Berkeley Green Technical College in Gloucestershire.[45]
Didcot is surrounded by farmland which has historically grown traditionalBritish crops such aswheat andbarley, sheep farming is also common in the area.[46] The area is also noted for farmers growingopium poppies for legal production ofmorphine andheroin to meetNational Health Service demand.[47] The poppies produced are sold toMacfarlan Smith, a majorpharmaceutical company, who hold a licence from the United Kingdom'sHome Office.[48]
Didcot formerly had adairy bottling factory and chicken farm in the town from 1935 to 1987, initially operated by Job's Dairy and later after 1970, Express Dairy; the site employed a large number of local people.[49] The dairy was located in the Northbourne area of the town, and was later redeveloped into a residential area around Western Avenue, next to the formerDidcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway line, now a cycle path.[50]
From 2007 until 2017, theDaily Mail & General Trust had a printing plant in Didcot.[51]
TheBritish Army'sVauxhall Barracks is on the edge of town. The regimental headquarters of11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Regiment RLC is based in the town.[52]
There are three tiers of local government covering Didcot, at parish (town), district and county level: Didcot Town Council,South Oxfordshire District Council andOxfordshire County Council. The town council has its offices at the Civic Hall on Britwell Road.[53]
The town council comprises 21 councillors representing the five wards in the town:[54]
Meetings of the town council are chaired by the mayor. Mayors are elected by the councillors for a one-year term; since 6 May 2025[update] the mayor has been Councillor Jim Loder (Park ward).[55]
Didcot is also the largest town in the parliamentary constituency ofDidcot and Wantage, which has been represented since 2024 atWestminster byOlly Glover,Liberal Democrat.
Didcot was anancient parish inBerkshire. When elected parish and district councils were created in 1894, Didcot was given a parish council and included in theWallingford Rural District. The rural district council moved its offices from Wallingford to Didcot in the 1950s.[56] Wallingford Rural District was abolished in 1974 and the area wastransferred to Oxfordshire and the new district ofSouth Oxfordshire, becoming the largest town in the new district. After 1974 parish councils were allowed to declare their parishes to be towns and take the style town council, as Didcot has done.[57] The Civic Hall was built for the town council in 1979 and also serves as a venue for public events.[53]
The district in England with the highest healthy life expectancy, according to anOffice for National Statistics (ONS) study, is the 1990s-built Ladygrove Estate in Didcot.[58] While the average UK healthy lifespan was thought to be 68.8 for women and 67 for men in 2001, people in Ladygrove district of Didcot could expect 86 healthy years. It is believed Ladygrove may have benefited from the local recreation grounds and sports centre.[58][59]
Didcot is served by sevenprimary schools: All Saints' C of E, Aureus, Ladygrove Park, Manor, Northbourne C of E, Stephen Freeman and Willowcroft. Along with these seven schools based in Didcot, a further six local village schools form the Didcot Primary Partnership: Blewbury Endowed C of E, Cholsey, Hagbourne, Harwell Community, Long Wittenham C of E and South Moreton County.[60] Didcot Primary Academy, opened in 2016 in the Great Western Park area,[61] falls underHarwell Parish.
Two of Didcot's statesecondary schools;St Birinus School andDidcot Girls' School are single-sex schools that join atsixth form to hostDidcot Sixth Form. There are two other secondary schools in Didcot which have opened alongside the construction of the Great Western Park estate;UTC Oxfordshire (ages 14–19), in 2015,[62] and Aureus School (ages 11–16), in 2017.[63]
Cornerstone, a 278-seater multi-purpose arts centre, was opened on 29 August 2008.[64][65]
Didcot Choral Society, founded in 1958, performs three concerts a year in various venues around the town as well as an annual tour (Paris in 2008, Belgium in 2009).[66]
Didcot Concert Orchestra, founded in 2017, performs concerts every February, May and October at Cornerstone arts centre in Didcot.[67][68]
In November 2018,Rebellion Developments began setting up a new studio on the edge of Didcot, valued at $100 million, using the existing formerDaily Mail printing works on Milton Road. The studio is planned to be used for film and TV series based on2000 AD comic series characters, includingJudge Dredd: Mega City One.[69]
Local news and television programmes are provided byBBC South andITV Meridian. Television signals are received from theOxford TV transmitter.[70]
Didcot's local radio stations areBBC Radio Oxford on 95.2 FM,Heart South on 102.6 FM andGreatest Hits Radio on 106.4 FM.
Local newspapers are theDidcot Herald[71] andOxfordshire Guardian.
Didcot has three mainleisure centres:
Didcot Town Council maintains the following:[75]
Didcot also has a nature reserve,Mowbray Fields, where wildlife includingcommon spotted orchid andSouthern Marsh Orchid occur.[76]
DidcotCricket Club's current home ground is at Boundary Park in Great Western Park.[77]
Didcot Phoenix cycle club[78] was founded in 1973 and is represented by over 70 members who participate in a range ofcycling activities including touring, time trials, road racing, Audax, cyclocross and off-road events.
TheOVO Energy Women's Tour, aroad cycling event, passed through Didcot on 12 June 2019.[79] The race was halted for around 30 minutes on the Broadway because of a crash that caused the withdrawal of race leaderMarianne Vos.[80]
The Didcot Karate School teaches traditionalGoju-ryukarate for adults and children at the Fleet Meadow Community Hall.[81] The club has been long established in the town and has been listed by the town council as a key local activity.[82]
Didcot DragonsKorfball club was founded in 2003. The club has two teams in the Oxfordshire leagues. They train in WillowbrookLeisure Centre in the winter and Boundary Park in the summer.[83]
Didcot Town Football Club's home ground is the Loop Meadow Stadium on the Ladygrove Estate, having moved from their previous pitch off Station Road in 1999 to make way for the new Orchard Centre development. Founded in 1907, the club currently play in the 8th tier of theEnglish Football League system.
Most notable achievements include winning theFA Vase in 2005 and reaching TheFA Cup 1st Round in 2015.
Didcot has its own chapter of the Hash House Harriers.[84] The club started in 1986 (the first run was on 8 April of that year).
Didcot Runners is an AAA affiliated running club founded in 2003 that meets every Tuesday & Thursday for group runs and fitness sessions. Its members participate in running races across the country.[85]
The Didcot & DistrictTable Tennis Association (DDTTA) was established in 1949 to promote the playing of table tennis in the Didcot area. It organises an annual league competition containing affiliated teams from towns and villages across south Oxfordshire.[86]
Didcot's synonymous connection with railways was noted inDouglas Adams andJohn Lloyd's humorous book theMeaning of Liff, published in 1983. The book, a "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet", referred to "a Didcot" as "The small, oddly shaped bit of card which a ticket inspector cuts out of a ticket with his clipper for no apparent reason".[98] Didcot is referred to inRicky Gervais' comedy feature filmDavid Brent: Life on the Road: the song "Lady Gypsy" on the film's soundtrack tells of a romantic meeting "by the lakeside, just south of Didcot".[99] An electricity pylon on farmland alongside Abingdon Road (opposite Tamar Way) on the eastern edge of Didcot featured on the cover of US rock bandBlack Swan Lane's albumUnder My Fallen Sky, released in November 2017.[100]
In March 2018, anonymous artistAthirty4 added a series of fictional fantasy names to a number of road signs in Didcot.[101] The names included:Narnia,Neverland,Emerald City,Middle Earth, andGotham City. Oxfordshire County Council thought the signs were an act of vandalism; however, members of the general public felt that the signs brought a lot of positive attention to the town.[102]
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