Wantage
Formercounty constituency for theHouse of Commons
Boundary of Wantage inOxfordshire
Location ofOxfordshire within England
County	Oxfordshire
Electorate	90,876 (December 2019)
Major settlements	Wantage,Didcot,Wallingford,Faringdon
1983–2024
Seats	One
Created from	Abingdon (majority of) (note: abolished)
Replaced by	Didcot and Wantage

Wantage was aconstituency^{[n 1]} inOxfordshire represented in theHouse of Commons of theParliament of the United Kingdom.^{[n 2]}

Its final MP was theConservativeDavid Johnston, who was first elected at the2019 general election replacingEd Vaizey who served as MP for Wantage for 14 years after first being elected at the2005 general election.^[1]

Further to the completion of the2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat was abolished. Subject to a reduction in size, with northern and western areas, including the town ofFaringdon, being transferred toWitney, it was reformed asDidcot and Wantage, to be first contested at the2024 general election.^[2]

The Wantage constituency covered the south-western part of Oxfordshire. There were three market towns in the constituency:Faringdon,Wallingford andWantage. All have tourist attractions, Wantage having monuments to being the birthplace of KingAlfred the Great, Wallingford, ancient enclosure walls of a castle and a medieval bridge.^{[n 3]} Faringdon bears a scar of theEnglish Civil War as its church lost its steeple. The largest town in the constituency wasDidcot, which grew up around theGreat Western Railway whenIsambard Kingdom Brunel built a branch line from itsmain line between London and Bristol to Oxford, siting the junction at the then-sparsely-populated parish and it has a power station and many major national construction and aggregate industries.

The constituency was mostlyrural in character, with more than 400farms in operation. Included were theUffington White Horse andThe Ridgeway, a prehistoric road, runs along its southern border. TheRiver Thames runs along the northern and western border. The area is affluent and Conservative in nature containing many commuters with fast transport links to London, with Didcot the only area with a strong Labour vote locally. The seat includes international race horse breeders and trainers with racing stables across a broad area that reaches into theLambourn Downs, crossing over the southern border into theNewbury constituency inBerkshire.

Workless claimants, registered jobseekers, were in November 2012 significantly lower than the national average of 3.8%, at 1.6% of the population based on a statistical compilation byThe Guardian.

The constituency was created for the 1983 general election further to theThird Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. This followed on from the reorganisation of local government under theLocal Government Act 1972 which came into force in April 1974, and saw the bulk of the area represented by the constituency ofAbingdon inBerkshire being transferred toOxfordshire. Under the Review, the majority of the Abingdon constituency formed the new constituency ofWantage, with the town ofAbingdon-on-Thames and areas to the west ofOxford being included in the new constituency ofOxford West and Abingdon.

The first MP for Wantage wasRobert Jackson, who served as a junior minister under bothMargaret Thatcher andJohn Major. Jackson defected to theLabour Party in 2005 shortly before standing down as an MP for the2005 general election. At that election,Ed Vaizey was elected as the MP for Wantage and between 2010 and 2016 held the post ofMinister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.

Ed Vaizey served as MP for Wantage until the2019 general election whereby Vaizey announced that he would be standing down. Shortly prior to this, Vaizey had theConservative whip removed after voting against Prime MinisterBoris Johnson on 3 September 2019.^[3] Vaizey had the Conservative whip restored on 29 October 2019.^[4] This meant that, for a brief time, Wantage was represented by anindependent MP.David Johnston was selected as the Conservative candidate to represent Wantage and was duly elected as the new MP for Wantage at the 2019 general election.^[5]

The seat, including its forerunner, was won byConservative Party candidates since 1924. The 2015 result made the seat the 76th-safest of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority.^[6]

All five parties' candidates achieved more than thedeposit-retaining threshold of 5% of the vote in 2015.Social Democrat candidate Winifred Tumin won the largest third-party share of the vote to date, in the 1983 election — 32.3% of the vote.

• The District of Vale of White Horse wards of Appleton, Craven, Drayton, Faringdon and Littleworth, Greendown, Grove, Harwell and Chilton, Hendred, Icknield, Island Villages, Kingston Bagpuize and Southmoor, Longworth, Marcham, Segsbury, Shrivenham, Stanford, Steventon, Sutton Courtenay, The Coxwells, and Upton and Blewbury; and
• The District of South Oxfordshire wards of Brightwell, Cholsey, Didcot North, Didcot Northbourne, Didcot South, Hagbourne, and Wallingford.^[7][8]

The new constituency includedWantage,Wallingford,Faringdon andDidcot which had previously all been part of the abolished constituency ofAbingdon.

Map of boundaries 2010–2024

• The District of Vale of White Horse wards of Blewbury and Upton, Craven, Drayton, Faringdon and The Coxwells, Greendown, Grove, Hanneys, Harwell, Hendreds, Kingston Bagpuize with Southmoor, Longworth, Marcham and Shippon, Shrivenham, Stanford, Sutton Courtenay and Appleford, Wantage Charlton, and Wantage Segsbury; and

• The District of South Oxfordshire wards of Brightwell, Cholsey and Wallingford South, Didcot All Saints, Didcot Ladygrove, Didcot Northbourne, Didcot Park, Hagbourne, and Wallingford North.^[9]

Marginal changes due to the realignment of the boundaries following changes to local authority wards.

Under the2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, theBoundary Commission for England proposed boundary changes to the Wantage constituency to reduce the number of electorate in the constituency.^[10] At the time of the2019 General Election, Wantage's total electorate was 90,845, making it the largest constituency inOxfordshire and the 13th largest in theUnited Kingdom.^[11] The proposals reduced the total electorate to 74,356 which is significantly closer to the average electorate of 72,200 for constituencies in England.^[12][13]

The commission proposed the renaming of the Wantage constituency toDidcot and Wantage.^[14] The boundary changes saw the wards ofFaringdon,Kingston Bagpuize, Thames, andWatchfield andShrivenham move into theWitney constituency, whilst the new Didcot and Wantage constituency absorbed the small villages ofClifton Hampden,Culham,Nuneham Courtenay andSandford-on-Thames from theHenley constituency.^[15][16]

• List of parliamentary constituencies in Oxfordshire
• Banbury (UK Parliament constituency)
• Henley (UK Parliament constituency)
• Oxford East (UK Parliament constituency)
• Oxford West and Abingdon (UK Parliament constituency)
• Witney (UK Parliament constituency)

• Wantage UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 1997 – April 2010) atMapIt UK
• Wantage UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 2010 – May 2024) atMapIt UK

51°36′N1°26′W / 51.60°N 1.43°W /51.60; -1.43

• Parliamentary constituencies in Oxfordshire (historic)
• Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1983
• Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 2024
• Wantage

• Wikipedia articles incorporating an LRPP-MP template with two unnamed parameters
• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use British English from March 2020
• All Wikipedia articles written in British English
• Use dmy dates from March 2020
• Coordinates on Wikidata
• Pages using the Kartographer extension