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Didcot

Didcot photos (11 available)

Old photo of Didcot

Didcot maps (2 available)

Old map of Didcot

Didcot books (11 available)

Didcot memories

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You can also read memories of nearby places in Oxfordshire below.

Oxfordshire memories

Boot Inn 1955, now The Old Boot, a private house

East Hagbourne, the Boot Inn c1955

Ceased operation as a pub in 1959. Now (2007) privately occupied by the Beran family. Previous owners were a builder who divided the land, the village schoolmaster, and the Jarvis'. A few relics of its pub days remain with serving hatches still visible and vertical planking in the hallway. The black rectangle to the left of the building was the privy, now gone. The large tree behind has gone but we have a Silver Birch of equal size by the front gate.
A memory of East Hagbourne contributed by Max Beran

Family connections.

Clifton Hampden, the Barley Mow Inn 1890

This was my grandfathers favourite inn at the time the photograph was taken. He was coachman at the Manor House at Long Wittenham a short walk along the 'Maddy' (a road from the inn to Long Wittenham following the river and very prone to flooding). Its a family story that he would often spend too long here and Granny would have to prepare the horse and coach and dress up in his clothes to fetch the master of the house from Didcot station several miles away. I remember her as a very resourceful woman. She died in 1938 on her 83rd birthday.
A memory of Clifton Hampden contributed by Mr BK Seeney

The Prior family of Steventon

Steventon, the Causeway c1955

My grandmother lived in Steventon with her own grandmother around 1880. She was Florence Prior and her own gran was Eliza Prior who by then was a widow and a laundress living in Timsbury Cottage. I have tried to find the cottage but the only place I have seen with a similar name is Timsbury Villa. I sometimes wonder if it is the same place. My own visit to Steventon was around 1986. I remember visiting St Michael's Church and having a picnic in the next field among all the cowslips and other wild flowers. It was beautiful. I walked around the churchyard and found many tombstones for the Prior family including one who was in the Grenadier Guards and was ...read more here
A memory of Steventon contributed by John Howard Norfolk

The best time of my life

I was 8 when I moved to Steventon.  We used to live in Didcot while I was a baby.  I enjoyed Didcot and liked the town side of it.  Also we moved here because my mum and dad wanted to live in the countryside while I was growing up to my teens. My mum is called Sharon Tappin and my dad is called Clive Tappin.  So far we have been here for a year and I really like it here and also I am settled in to the school.
My name is Rebecca Tappin.
A memory of Steventon contributed by Rebecca Tappin

Extracts From Didcot & Oxfordshire books

Didcot, Broadway c1955

Didcot is famous for being a major junction on the Western Region main line. The town has grown up around the junction, and today stands in the shadow of a huge coal-fired power station built in the 1960s.
An extract from from"Oxfordshire Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, the Crown and Thistle Hotel c1955

The Crown and Thistle Hotel, first mentioned in 1605, was a coaching inn, and one of the town’s best known ones. It is still popular, and has the truncated remains of its inn courtyard within – we see it here from the yard end of the carriageway through the building. The further part of the yard in this view now has a roof supported on posts to give shelter to tables and chairs.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Stert Street 1893

Skirting the modern shopping centre, our tour reaches Stert Street, which runs south towards the Market Place; in the 1890s, it was one of Abingdon’s main shopping streets. On the right, W H Hooke’s bookshop (now a jeweller’s) is the start of the market place encroachment. We are looking towards St Nicholas’s Church. Until 1883, only its tower was visible; then two pubs which jutted into the street, one on each side, were demolished for road improvement. Little survives on the left today apart from the two gables of No 3, a 15th-century house, partly hidden by the horse-less cart.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Bridge and River Steamer c1955

The Fraternity of the Holy Cross built the two bridges, the causeway across Nag’s Head Island, and then the long causeway that runs south for over a thousand yards across the flood plain to Culham, where they built a five-arched stone bridge between 1416 and 1422. Culham Bridge crossed the cut dug for Abbot Orderic in 1052 and known as the Swift Ditch. It is difficult nowadays to see that quiet stream as the main navigation channel, rather than the Thames itself, but so indeed it was for centuries. This view shows Burford Bridge.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Bridge Restaurant and Tea Gardens c1950

Stevens’s Boatyard on the east end of Nag’s Head Island also incorporated the landing stage for the Crown and Thistle Hotel in Bridge Street, some hundred yards away from the river. Note the elegant steam launch tied up at the landing stage with its striped awning to protect passengers. The house between the trees is Cosener’s House, built on the site where the cosener or kitcheners lived – he was the medieval official who ran the Abingdon Abbey’s kitchens.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".