page_title: History of Banbury
section_title: 1947 to 1970
hierarchical_section_title: History of Banbury / General history / 1947 to 1970
caption_attribution_description: English: Woodgreen swimming pool, Banbury, Oxfordshire in 2004. It was built in the early 1960s and renovated in the late 1970s. It was closed in the early 2000s, renovated in 2009 and reopened in 2010.
context_page_description: Banbury is a circa 1,500-year-old market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, England. It is 64 miles northwest of London, 38 miles southeast of Birmingham, 27 miles south of Coventry and 21 miles north northwest of the county town of Oxford.
context_section_description: The town saw rapid expansion during the 1930s and 1940s as housing was built for newcomers from nearby towns and the emerging London overspill, and another 2,545 (including Withycombe Drive in 1947) during the period from 1945 to 1967 as the population began to grow significantly. The housing developments were mainly in the western parts of the town between the Warwick and Broughton roads, with others being built on the site of the former brickworks in Grimbury. A later expansion between the 1950s and 1970s would reach Hardwick, Ruscote, Easington, Bretch Hill and Poets' Corner, due to influxes from the London overspill and from the West Midlands.
  In 1961 a total of 6,504 households were built, mostly in the style of those around Neithrop's Admiral Holland pub. 231 other, older buildings in the town centre still had no indoor toilets, 1,325 had no fixed baths, 1,643 had no hot water taps, and 98 had no cold water tap.
  The land south of the Foscote Private Hospital in Calthorpe, Oxfordshire and Easington farm were mostly open farmland until the early 1960s as shown by the Ordnance Survey maps of 1947, 1964, 1955 and 1961. It had only a few farmsteads, the odd house, an allotment field-come-rugby pitch (now under the Sainsbury's store), and the Municipal Borough of Banbury council's small reservoir just south Easington farm and a water spring lay to the south of it. Two minor streams ran from a spring near the allotment gardens and the land under today's Timms estate. An old clay pit, kiln and brick works lay near the Poets' Corner estate. The pit was of mid Victorian origin and the buildings were put up by the issuing of the 1881 O.S. map. The pit had been filled in by the 1920s, the buildings closed by the 1940s and the site was built on by the late 1960s. Bankside road was constructed from 1965 to 1975 in a north to south direction as the local street testifies to.
  The Woodgreen swimming pool was built in the early 1960s and renovated in the late 1970s. It was closed in the early 2000s, heavily renovated in 2009 and reopened in 2010. The much frequented outdoor pool is closed from September to March due to the bad seasonal weather
  The Ruscote estate, which now has a notable South Asian community, was expanded in the 1950s because of the growth of the town due to the London overspill and further grew in the mid-1960s.
  British Railways closed Merton Street station and the Buckingham to Banbury line to passenger traffic at the end of 1960. Merton Street freight depot continued to handle livestock traffic for Banbury's cattle market until 1966, when this to was discontinued and the railway dismantled. In March 1962 Sir John Betjeman celebrated the line from Culworth Junction in his poem Great Central Railway, Sheffield Victoria to Banbury. British Railways closed this line too in 1966.
caption: The popular Woodgreen swimming pool in 2004.
exif: {}