Kingsgrove

Kingsgrove today

Kingsgrove is a new neighbourhood on the north-east side of Wantage, built on farmland at Crab Hill between the A338 Grove road and the A417 towards Ardington. Planned for about 1,500 homes, it has been under construction since the late 2010s, with Wantage Primary Academy, a care home, sports pitches, a central park and a local centre among its facilities. King Alfred Way, the new road along its eastern side, links the A417 with the A338 and takes through traffic away from the town centre. Kingsgrove is part of Wantage parish.

History

Prehistoric and Roman farmers

Before building started, Oxford Archaeology excavated part of the site in 2018. They found a settlement that began in the 8th or 7th century BC, with a large post-built roundhouse, and grew into a long-lived Iron Age farmstead with many roundhouses and storage pits. In the Roman period the layout was replaced by rectangular ditched enclosures, with corn-drying ovens and wells, and the site seems to have been farmed until about AD 400. A single Anglo-Saxon sunken-floored building of the 6th or 7th century was also found.

Fields and parish boundaries

For most of the last thousand years Crab Hill was open farmland. Traces of medieval ploughing and a late medieval trackway leading towards Wantage were found in the excavation. Until 2018 the land lay partly in Grove parish and partly in Lockinge parish; a boundary review then moved it into Wantage.

The development

Crab Hill was allocated for housing in the Vale of White Horse local plan, and outline planning permission for 1,500 homes, a school, a community centre and a link road was granted in 2015. St Modwen is the master developer, working with the landowner, Crabhill Developments, and other housebuilders have built individual phases. The first residents moved in during the late 2010s, and by May 2022 about 350 homes were occupied. The primary school took its first pupils in September 2020. The link road, known during planning as the Wantage Eastern Link Road, was completed and named King Alfred Way in September 2024.

Things to see

• The central park and green spaces laid out as part of the development.
• King Alfred Way, with its cycle and footpath, linking to Charlton and Grove.