Bristol businessmen formed the Great Western Railway in 1833. They appointed a young engineer, I. K. Brunel, then 26, to build a railway linking their city with London. He had some imaginative and original ideas, one of which was a seven-foot gauge, as against Stephenson's four feet eight and a half inches. Stephenson had merely followed tradition which was the width of rut tracks of stage coaches; one historian claims this was the distance between the wheels of Roman chariots!

The Bristol directors accepted Brunel's suggestions for the route of the new track, following the Avon valley, sweeping round to Swindon, and then down the Thames valley to London, thus avoiding the Cotswolds, the Berkshire Downs and the Chilterns. Challow, Wantage, Steventon, Didcot, Cholsey, Goring and Pangbourne; all except one of these villages were in North Berkshire, so that the route chosen just fringed Oxfordshire, to negotiate the Goring Gap. Environmental considerations, even during the Victorian reign, must have influenced Brunel to span the Thames at Moulsford in order to conceal his track in a cutting below the Chiltern hills then through to Pangbourne.

Steventon was then the natural place for a traveller to Oxford to take a coach via Abingdon, while down the line, Didcot, a hamlet of thatched cottages clustered around All Saints Church, resented the invasion of rough navvies who built the railway, some of whom were to settle in this pretty North Berkshire location. They were provided for by the railway company, which built what they called Newtown, nearer to the village of East Hagbourne; first this was called North Hagbourne, later contracted to Northbourne. Meanwhile G. W. R. were negotiating an Oxford link on their successful Bristol-London venture.

Abingdon, with an eye on the prosperity a rail link would offer, favoured a junction at Steventon, which would have routed the line through Abingdon and thence enhanced its chance to become County Town. However, the chosen route was from Didcot, and had to cross the river in two places (could this have been the more economic route?) with a stop some distance from the village of Culham which was called Abingdon Road Station. Abingdon, thus thwarted, held a meeting and formed a railway company of its own: The Abingdon Railway Company (A.R.C.) was to link with the Didcot-Oxford line at a point on the Berkshire side of the river, near to Radley.

In 1894, Parish Councils were formed - we also celebrate this centenary this year and it would have been at this time, 100 years ago, that North Hagbourne and All Saints Church parishes lost their 'siamese twin' co-existence and became united under Didcot Parish Council.

Meanwhile, the junction at Didcot found new prosperity with the War Office and its concern for logistical support for the British Army; hence a huge depot developed beside and including the new rail system. South from the junction, a line ran to the coast, across the Downs and through Newbury, while northwards 'our' line reached Oxford through South Hinksey into Grandpont where it terminated in the early days, and to this day, south of Folly Bridge, you will see Western Road - this was the Great Western Station approach road.

Similarly in Radley, where the existing platform is placed was not the original site.
The A.R.C. ran trains out of Stert Street to converge with the Oxford line at what was then Abingdon Junction. Later parallel lines to the main line brought trains through a further half-mile to the present Radley Station site with road access on both sides.

At that time, the owners of Nuneham Courtenay were the Harcourt family, but Lord Harcourt's Oxfordshire manor house was separated from the railway by the river. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1890s, it is certainly possible that he used some influence to have a convenient place to board a train for London. From Radley Boathouse can be seen the old Ferry Cottage on the Nuneham bank at a point where a ferry existed until 1946 and a causeway road ran into Lower Radley. I understand this was used by the Harcourts' own coach to convey them to the station, and I have heard that, to this day, timetabling of the morning London train has this historical background - the 9.15 and 10.05 still stop at Radley, while Culham and App1eford are not similarly favoured. I wonder what influence may have been used when the new station was built right in Radley village with a roadway directly to the main entrance, on the 'up' platform (east side of the line)? However, this entrance is now fenced off in favour of a small housing development on the site of the pond, which had, for over 140 years, supplied water for thirsty steam locomotives.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Editor of this journal for all the hard work he has put in to assemble this unique collection of real stories from 'our village' history. The attention to detail is what Peter Heath is so good at. These memories, these pictures, are precious reminders of past glories - I wonder what is yet to come?

Denis Standen, April, 1994