July 2023: Fifty Years of Service with Thames Valley Police
On 10 July 2023, Christine Bovingdon-Cox spoke about My 50 Year Career in Policing in the Thames Valley.
The Thames Valley Police Force was established in 1968 through the amalgamation of five local forces. In her talk, Christine related the colourful and varied career she had enjoyed in the TVP between joining as a cadet in 1971 and receiving the British Empire Medal in 2021 in recognition of her service. In 1973, at the end of her training, Christine was posted to Aylesbury from where, in early 1974, she attended the aftermath of an IRA bombing at the National Defence College, Latimer. Ten people were injured and although there were no fatalities it was a harrowing experience. Between 1978 and 1980 Christine was in the CID in Oxford and in 1980 transferred to Special Branch where she acted as a protection officer for important visitors to the Thames Valley. These included cabinet ministers and members of the royal family, several of whom Christine has very fond memories.
After periods spent in the women’s specialist unit and in uniform on the beat in Oxford, Christine set up the domestic violence unit as a pilot scheme in the TVP. Up to that point domestic violence had not been taken very seriously despite being a widespread problem. To deal better with the issues involved Christine decided she needed more knowledge of civil law, and this led her to study part-time for a law degree at Oxford Brookes University, graduating in 2004. Later Christine became a family liaison officer. This involved supporting murder victims’ families in the knowledge that, although they were bereaved, they might also include the perpetrators. In 2005 she was deployed to live for four months with Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the 7/7 bombers, who had been placed in witness protection. Subsequently, Lewthwaite has herself become one of the world’s most wanted terrorist suspects.
June 2023: Six Warrior Women of the English Civil War
On 12 June 2003, Stephen Barker spoke about Six Warrior Women of the English Civil Wars.
Stephen began by setting the scene, talking about the three Civil Wars of the 1640s and the position of women at the time. The Civil Wars were bloody and brutal on a scale that is perhaps not appreciated today. Women had few rights, being unable to own property and subject to their father before marriage and their husband afterwards. But through the roles they played in the Civil Wars, the six women that Stephen spoke about helped to change the beliefs that people had about women and their capabilities.
Lady Mary Bankes defended Corfe Castle for three years against sieges by Parliamentary forces. Mary Overton was a prominent Leveller who was jailed for publishing seditious pamphlets, written by her husband, whom she later petitioned Parliament to have released after he too had been imprisoned. Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, was a spy and double agent, working at various times for both sides in the conflict. Women proved to be excellent spies for both sides. Dorothy Hazard was a dissenter who established a Baptist church in Bristol and was active in the defence of the city against the Royalist besiegers. Lady Jane Whorwood was an ardent Royalist who acted as a spy and smuggler, and engineered a plot (which proved unsuccessful) for Charles I’s escape from imprisonment on the Isle of Wight in 1648. Lady Mary Verney, originally from Abingdon, married Ralph Verney whose estates in Buckinghamshire were sequestered by the government in 1646 during his exile in France. Mary returned to England to oppose the sequestration in Parliament and was eventually successful.
May 2023: Growing up in a 1950s Corner Shop
On 8 May 2023, History Club members and guests enjoyed a fascinating talk by Josie Midwinter about her parents’ shop in Didcot, enhanced by a model of the shop and specimens of ration books.
Josie’s father Henry Midwinter shrewdly set up the grocery, confectionery and tobacco shop immediately opposite Didcot railway station, attracting much custom from railway staff, train and bus passengers, and the Army Ordnance Depot. During rationing, the shop received exactly the cheese needed to supply each registered customer with their allotted 2 oz per week. In practice, customers got their precisely cut ration, and the Midwinter family had the crumbs left over.
The shop was a cheerful place, where Henry always found time to listen to customers. Without refrigerators, they could not stock, for example, meat pies, but did sell their own bacon. They also provided much-used cycle storage (for 4d a day), and took and received parcels carried by local buses.
The family sold the shop after Henry died in 1963, when customers had begun to prefer the chain stores in the new Didcot Broadway. Josie’s experience of being able to talk to anyone was the foundation for her subsequent vocation as a priest.
April 2023: The History of Oxford University
On 3 April 2023, Alastair Lack spoke about The History of Oxford University.
Alastair’s talk outlined the history of the University, starting from the 900s when students are first recorded to have been in Oxford, through to its development into the modern University with 39 Colleges and 24,000 students, drawn from over 160 countries. Before the founding of the first colleges, students lived in halls throughout the city and little importance was attached to learning. The collegiate system began with the founding of University College in 1249 with the goal of providing an education to its students who, initially, numbered only four. Balliol followed in 1263 and, in the ensuing centuries, monarchs and churchmen founded more colleges. These included: New College, established by William of Wykeham in 1379 exclusively for students from Winchester College, which he had also founded: and Lincoln College, founded by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1427 as a bulwark against the Lollards and other unorthodox religious movements for which Oxford has always been noted. Two notable 15th century colleges are All Souls, which has no students, and Magdalen. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville, both founded in the 1870s, were the first colleges to admit women.
Oxford has many important libraries, built on the original donation, by Duke Humphry, of 200 books, and developed by Sir Thomas Bodley who established the Bodleian as a legal deposit library, entitled to a copy of every book published in the country. The Radcliffe Camera was England’s first science library.
Oxford’s colleges, museums, libraries and churches are the work of many of the greatest architects of every century, including Wren and Hawksmoor in the 17th and George Gilbert Scott in the 19th.
March 2023: The Making of Radley Lakes
On 13 March 2023, Richard Dudding spoke about The Making of Radley Lakes to a packed church of members and guests.
Richard’s talk covered the history of the Radley Lakes area up to the year 2000. He began by explaining its topology and geography: by the river, an area of meadow, to the north of that, pasture, and further north again, arable land overlaying a gravel terrace. This mix proved ideal for human settlement and, by around 2000 BC, organized communities had been established. But around the time of the Roman occupation they disappeared, and it was not until after the 10th century founding of Abingdon Abbey that Thrupp was settled. The area was farmed in a strip system, with common land close to the river. Thrupp thrived for several centuries but after about 1300, and for reasons unknown, its population declined and never recovered.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Lakes area became part of the new manor of Radley. The land was enclosed towards the end of the 17th century and large tenant farmers, who employed labourers, replaced the self-sufficient husbandmen and yeoman farmers. In the 19th century, the Dockar-Drysdale family acquired Wick Farm and went on to buy Thrupp Farm, which became the farming base with new buildings. After World War II the family began to sell some fields and lease others to companies who extracted gravel from what had been the arable acreages. Gravel extraction ceased in the 1990s. The pits filled with groundwater to form lakes, while trees and shrubs colonised what had once been thriving farmland, and the Radley Lakes area began to take on its current, but certainly not ancient, appearance.
February 2023: Thames Bridges between Oxford and Abingdon
On 13 February 2023, Keith Parry gave a talk about the Thames bridges between Oxford and Abingdon to a well-attended meeting with over 40 guests.
The first part of Keith’s talk was a general overview of bridges. In the 11th century, there was only one bridge over the Thames and that was in London. In the following six centuries, the addition of further bridges over the Thames followed the ups and downs of the English economy, with a big increase from the middle of the 13th century as the population and economy grew. Bridges often replaced fords or ferries, being safer and more efficient. They were particularly important in shaping the route of long distance trading networks. Wooden bridges were gradually replaced by stone. The costs of maintaining them were met in various ways, through bridge estates, which often derived their income from rents, through bequests and endowments, and through tolls levied on traffic passing over and under a bridge.
Having set the background, Keith went on to talk about four local bridges in more detail, one of which was Abingdon Bridge. Before it was built, the east-west route through the town was difficult, requiring ferry crossings over the Thames and Swift Ditch. As a result, wool from the Cotswolds that was sent to London for export avoided the town. At the start of the 15th century, in a bid to capture this trade, four merchants from Abingdon built bridges across the Thames and Swift Ditch. Unfortunately, wool exports from the Cotswolds were being replaced at this time by the export of cloth manufactured in the Newbury area. The cloth was sent directly to London, once again by-passing Abingdon. Abingdon Bridge was improved in 1829 to take two-way traffic and entirely rebuilt in 1927: this is the bridge we see today.
Keith also talked about Folly Bridge in Oxford and the bridges at Sutton Courtenay and Clifton Hampden.
January 2023: The history of the railway from Didcot to Oxford
On 9 January 2023, Laurence Waters gave a very well-attended talk on The History of the Railway from Didcot to Oxford.
The Great Western Railway was founded in 1833 to build a line connecting Bristol to London, with Isambard Kingdom Brunel appointed engineer. Brunel was a believer in the advantages of a broad gauge (7 foot) track and it was not until 1892 that GWR wholly moved to the standard gauge. A branch line to Oxford was envisaged in the original GWR plans but a shortage of money, and opposition from some quarters, led to this idea being scrapped. However, in 1843 Parliament passed the Oxford Railway Act and in June 1844 GWR’s line connecting Didcot Junction (as it was then known) to Oxford was opened. At Culham Brunel built a brick and stone station, which is now a listed building. The station in Oxford was located at Grandpont, close to a wharf on the Thames. The line was later extended northwards, reaching Banbury in 1850 and Birmingham in 1852. In the latter year, the station at Oxford was moved to its present location. In 1854 a spur was built to link Abingdon and Oxford. The station at Radley opened in 1873 as a new junction station for the Abingdon branch.
In telling the story of the Didcot to Oxford line, Laurence showed many fascinating pictures and photographs of its stations, locomotives and people, from the earliest years to the present day. It was striking to see the large numbers employed at the stations and also to learn that horses were widely used on the railway for shunting. Didcot played a crucial role in this, being the location of the feed store for the horses of the entire GWR network.
November 2022: The men who built Oxford
On 14th November 2022, Liz Woolley gave a fact-filled talk: From Axtell to Zacharias: the Men who built Oxford.
Oxford expanded greatly in the 19th century and Liz Woolley’s talk introduced us to the men who shaped the development of the city in the Victorian era. They were builders, craftsmen, architects, and other professionals, as well as speculators, large and small. Several of them played multiple roles in business, politics and local government, George Parsons Hester being an example. He was a solicitor and later Town Clerk of Oxford who bought Osney Island in the early 1850s. He paid £65 per acre and quickly sold, for around £800 per acre, 125 plots to be developed by local builders. Thanks to its proximity to the new railway stations, the scheme was, for Hester at least, a great success. But the island was prone to flooding and the houses were very small and sometimes of poor quality.
Other notable builders of Oxford included the architect Samuel Lipscomb Seckham, who designed Park Town, which was completed in the early 1860s. In contrast to Osney Island, where the houses were occupied mostly by railway workers and other artisans, Park Town was marketed to the middle classes. William Wilkinson was another very successful architect, who was responsible for the Randolph Hotel and for the development of North Oxford on land owned by St John’s College, work which, following his retirement, was completed by his nephew, H W Moore. Walter Gray was a speculative property developer who played a central role in the development of North Oxford as the broker between college, architect and builders. Gray exemplified the close links between property development and politics: he was elected a city councillor in 1881, served four times as Oxford’s Mayor, and was knighted in 1903. Other notable builders and tradesmen included Thomas Axtell, a stonemason and partner in the firm of Symm & Co, which closed in 2020, and Thomas Henry Kingerlee, whose firm continues to the present day, under the fifth generation of family ownership.
October 2022: Keble College and ‘The Light of the World’
On 10 October 2022, Lizzy Rowe gave a talk: Keble College and ‘The Light of the World’ by Holman Hunt. She began by recounting how Keble came to be founded. John Keble was the author of ‘The Christian Year’, published in 1827, a best-selling collection of religious poems. He was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford and, together with Pusey and Newman, was a central figure in the Oxford Movement. Following his death in 1866, his friends decided to found a college in his memory. Thirty-five thousand pounds were raised by public subscription and Keble College opened in 1870. The design, by William Butterfield, is in the high Victorian Gothic style, and uses brick rather than the traditional stone. It has long proved controversial. The chapel, also by Butterfield, was added in 1870, following a donation by William Gibbs.
William Holman Hunt’s painting, ‘The Light of the World’, hangs in a side chapel in Keble. Hunt was a leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and the painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854. It was given as a gift to Keble by its original purchasers. The picture shows Christ seeking admission at a door and is laden with religious symbolism. Two later versions believed to be by Holman Hunt exist. The larger, from 1900-1904, was purchased by the social reformer Charles Booth. Booth viewed the painting as a religious rather than artistic artefact and he arranged its exhibition throughout the British Empire where it met with huge interest, sometimes bordering on hysteria. This version now hangs in St. Paul’s Cathedral. ‘The Light of the World’ continues to be a very popular and much reproduced work of art.
September 2022: A Guide’s Guide – Working in Historic Houses in the 21st Century
At RHC’s meeting on 12 September, Joyce Huddleston showed photographs from the Club’s archives of Radley schoolchildren at the late Queen’s visit to Abingdon in 1956, and of the Queen at Radley College in 1997. This was followed by our customarily swift Annual General Meeting.
Sarah Somerville then gave the Club a ‘Guide’s guide’, describing her experiences working in two historic houses: Highclere Castle and Shaw House.
Highclere Castle is the seat of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. The 5th Earl sponsored Howard Carter’s excavations in Egypt, culminating in the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Visitors can see copies of the tomb’s treasures, which had lain forgotten at Highclere until the butler showed them to the 7th Earl.
The house is now better known as the fictional ‘Downton Abbey’. Sarah was fascinated to observe the hours it took the television crews to make a few minutes of film. From 2011, there were thousands of visitors a day. Staff had to balance the needs of the current 8th Earl and his family, the film crews and actors, and the visitors – and chase escaping sheep.
Currently, Sarah is managing visitor services at West Berkshire Council’s Shaw House, Newbury. Built 1579-81 in the then expensive brick, with huge windows and chimneys, the house was requisitioned in 1939, became a school in 1943, but was unsafe and unoccupied from 1985. From 2003, it was expensively restored. It is now a conference centre and Register Office, open to the public at weekends and holidays. Keeping out damp, and maintaining the Elizabethan windows, continue to be a challenge.