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Carterton was named after a man called William Carter, who bought up a lot of
land locally. He then sold it off in plots, for smallholdings and market
gardens. People even came to settle here from London.
The original bungalows were built of wood with outer shells of tin. One family
also had a very deep well where they kept their milk and butter in a bucket,
dangling on a rope.
Carterton has become best known for the growing of tomatoes, the soil here seems
to give them a flavour all of their own. Sadly though, many local nurseries have
disappeared over the years, the families not carrying on the business and
greenhouses making way for housing development.
Carterton was once part of a parish with Black Bourton, using St Marys church.
A small wooden building, St Johns, served as a church until the present day
brick-built one in 1965. There are Catholic and Methodist churches for the
community here as well.
Royal Air Force Brize Norton came into being in the 1930's. Carterton was to have
been the name of the airfield but it was changed to avoid any confusion with
Cardington in Bedfordshire. In the 1960's the United States Air Force was
stationed here. To take their larger bombers the runway was extended, thus
cutting the parish into two, and later Black Bourton became a parish on its own.
There was once a railway station. The line had been there for years from
Fairford to Oxford. A platform and buildings were hurriedly built in 1944 during
the invasion of Europe to transport troops to the airfield, and it was later
used for carrying the tomatoes and mushrooms from a nearby farm. It was then cut
off from Carterton when the Black Bourton road was closed with the building of
the new runway, although a footpath and cycle way around that side of the
airfield is still in use. What a pity that the entire line was eventually closed
it would have helped to ease the present day congestion of getting into Oxford
by road!
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