Didcot

Didcot (ˈdɪdkɒt,_-kət ) is a railway town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the historic county of Berkshire. Didcot is south of Oxford, east of Wantage and north west of Reading. The town is noted for its railway heritage, Didcot station opening as a junction station on the Great Western Main Line in 1844. Today the town is known for the railway museum and power stations, and is 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 the Rutherford 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 the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age and Bronze Age. In the Roman 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 near Long Wittenham, evidence of which was found during surveying in 1994. A hoard of 126 gold Roman 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 the Ashmolean Museum on loan from the British Museum. The Domesday Book of 1086 does not record Didcot. In 13th-century records the toponym appears as Dudecota, Dudecote, Doudecote, Dudcote or Dudecothe. Some of these spellings continued into later centuries, and were joined by Dodecote from the 14th century onward, Dudcott from the 16th century onward and Didcott from the 17th century onward. It is derived from Old English, meaning the house or shelter of Dudda's people. The name is believed to be derived from that of Dida, a 7th-century Mercian sub-king who ruled the area around Oxford and was the father of Saint Frithuswith or Frideswide, now the patron saint of both Oxford and Oxford University. Didcot was then a rural Berkshire village, and it remained so for centuries, only occasionally appearing in records.