17 Facts About Didcot

Didcot is a railway town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the historic county of Berkshire.

Didcot is 15 miles south of Oxford, 10 miles east of Wantage and 15 miles north west of Reading.

Didcot was then a rural Berkshire village, and it remained so for centuries, only occasionally appearing in records.

The oldest surviving house in Didcot is White Cottage, a 16th-century timber-framed building in Manor Road that has a wood shingle roof.

Didcot village was on the route between London and Wantage, which in 1752 was made a toll road.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Didcot is surrounded by farmland which has historically grown traditional British crops such as wheat and barley, sheep farming is common in the area.

Until 1974 Didcot was in Berkshire, but was transferred to Oxfordshire in that year, and from Wallingford Rural District to the district of South Oxfordshire, becoming the largest town in the new district.

Didcot is the largest town in the parliamentary constituency of Wantage, which has been represented since 2019 at Westminster by David Johnston, Conservative.

Didcot is served by seven primary schools: All Saints' C of E, Aureus, Ladygrove Park, Manor, Northbourne C of E, Stephen Freeman and Willowcroft.

In November 2018, Rebellion Developments began setting up a new studio on the edge of Didcot, valued at $100 million, using the existing former Daily Mail printing works on Milton Road.

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

Didcot is referred to in Ricky Gervais' comedy feature film David 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".

An electricity pylon on farmland alongside Abingdon Road on the eastern edge of Didcot featured on the cover of US rock band Black Swan Lane's album Under My Fallen Sky, released in November 2017.