Didcot pubs through the ages, retired Oxford historian and Didcot & District U3A history group convenor Eugene Cole

THE arrival of the Great Western Railway in Didcot in June 1844 had a significant economic and environmental impact on the local farming community.

The railway brought new and different people, mostly railway workers, who were better paid than farm labourers and relatively more independent.

In order to bring livestock and passengers to the new station, GWR built Station Road connecting the station forecourt to the nearby Wallingford Toll Road (now Broadway).

In 1846 the railway financed the building of a new 25-bedroom hotel and named it the Great Western Junction Hotel.

The site acquired included a small late 17th century alehouse, the Tap. For most of the 20th century, the hotel was known locally as the Junction and Tap.

In 1982, the Tap – then leased to Didcot Rugby Club – was demolished overnight to make way for a new car park for the hotel.

In 2007 the Junction and Tap Hotel was demolished and its sign hangs in the Didcot Railway Centre.

The Didcot Corn Exchange, a large rectangular building, was built in 1857 by a group of farming entrepreneurs and for the next four decades attracted wealth to Didcot.

The building became the Station Garage in the 1930s and was demolished in the 1950s.

Part of the site was acquired by British Rail and the remainder, Julian's Garage, was demolished in 2016.?

During the 1860s two more hotels opened; the Prince of Wales Hotel in 1862 and the Royal Oak Inn in 1868.

The Oak was built on a site close to the present derelict Didcot Labour Club and was demolished during the 1920s.

In 1936 a new Royal Oak was built on Park Road which served the new housing development on Norreys and Park Road.

In 1866 the White Hart Inn was built on the junction at Station Road and what is now the Broadway.

This Inn was demolished in 1927 to make way for a New White Hart.

In 1972 the Hart was renamed the Broadways.

In the 1880s the Railway Arms on the Hagbourne Road was built to serve the railway workers and local residents.

That was renamed The Sprat in the 1940s.

According to some, the name change derived from the custom of rail workers grilling sprats over a fire in the pub.

In 2016 it, too, was demolished to make way for urban development.

The Queens Arms, built in the 1860s in response to Didcot's increasing farming population, was financed by the local farmers and the Abingdon Brewery and patronised almost exclusively by the farming community.

The modern Wheatsheaf Pub on the Wantage Road dates from the late 1920s.

It was rebuilt on the site of a 17th century Wheatsheaf Inn which was burnt down in the 1920s when its thatched roof caught fire.

It is recorded that the retreating Royalist army billeted here in June 1644 on their way to Oxford after the capture of Reading by the Parliamentarians.

Nearby, at the Georgetown roundabout is the Wallingford Arms built about the same time in the late 1920s as the Marlborough Club which served the community around Park Road, Georgetown Parish and Wantage Road.

Custom-built, it had a family tea-room, a public bar and saloon lounge.

During the second world war, it served Canadian and American troops who were constructing a new runway at Harwell.

It closed in 2014.