Portal:Oxfordshire/Selected article/6
Didcot is a town in the Thames Valley, in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire).
The district in England and Wales with the highest healthy life expectancy, according to the Office for National Statistics study, is the 1990s-built Ladygrove estate in Didcot.
Didcot dates back to the Iron Age. The settlement was situated on the ridge in the town, and the remainder of the surrounding area was marshland.
The Romans attempted to drain the marshland by building the ditch that runs north through what is now known as the Ladygrove area north of the town near Long Wittenham.
Didcot first appears in historical records in the 1200s as Dudcotte, Berkshire. The name is believed to be derived from that of the local Abbot. Didcot was then a sleepy rural Berkshire village with a population of 100 or so, and remained that way for hundreds of years, only occasionally cropping up in records. Parts of the original village still exist in the Lydalls Road area and part of All Saints church dates back to the eleventh century. It was much smaller than several surrounding villages, who are now dwarfed by modern Didcot.
1839 saw the arrival of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway at Didcot, and in 1844 his station followed, which enclosed the track completely in a similar style to Paddington (the original station burnt down in the later part of nineteenth century). This and the junction of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway created the conditions for the future growth of Didcot. The station's name also finally fixed the spelling of Didcot.
