Shrivenham - Economic History

Economic History

There has been human settlement at Shrivenham from at least 400 BC. The remains of a Roman villa have been uncovered nearby.

Shrivenham is part of Shrivenham Hundred which includes Ashbury, Buscot, Coleshill, Compton Beauchamp, Eaton Hastings, Longcot, Shrivenham, and Uffington. After the 19th century English hundreds effectively ceased to function, although they have not been abolished.

The Wilts & Berks Canal from Semington on the Kennet and Avon Canal to Abingdon on the River Thames was built between 1796 and 1810. In 1805 it reached Shrivenham where a wharf was built. Coal delivered via Semington to Shrivenham peaked at 601 tons in 1840, when the Great Western Railway was built through the area and opened Shrivenham railway station. Coal deliveries by canal fluctuated through the 1840s and then collapsed from 272 tons in 1850 to only 28 tons in 1852 and none for most years thereafter, except for 27 tons in 1858 and 24 tons in 1864.

Other canal freight also declined, and between 1893 and 1896 just 48 tons were shipped between Shrivenham and Wantage. In 1894–95 Ainsworth, a local canal carrier, handled 23 tons of freight at Shrivenham. By then the canal was increasingly in disrepair, in 1901 the collapse of the Stanley Aqueduct effectively ended the little remaining traffic and in 1914 an Act of Parliament formalised the abandonment of the canal.

Shrivenham railway station continued to serve the parish until British Railways closed it in 1964.