Richard Briers used to live in Carswell on the edge of Bampton and came to Adrian Simmonds' shop in the Market Square to buy his pet food. He is in the shop in this photograph.

A bird was found to have made its nest inside the letterbox at Bampton and Brize Norton Railway station by Mrs Emmie Papworth who along with Mr F G Cannons was a post lady in Bampton about 1960. It was thought to be a member of the tit family and was disturbed only once while the eggs were being hatched.

Originally called the Bampton Charity Shop, it had a name change and a legal status changed to enable it to donate monies to other charities in Bampton. Apparently a charity cannot give money to another charity and Trevor Milne-Day gave his time to deal with the legal matter of the change. In this article Fenella Gray talks about the history of the shop from its inception in 2004.

n November 2015 eight products, including Patrick Strainge's Bampton Royal sausages were nominated for the Q Guild Smithfield Awards. Only 200 butchers in England can hold a Q guild aware at any one time so it really is a feather in the cap of our local butchers shop.
The Bampton Royal sausages were also a firm favourite with many members of the cast of Downton Abbey which was partly filmed in Bampton.

We were all sorry when Adrian Simmonds had to close his shop. It was like an Aladdin's cave inside and he aimed to have 6 new things each week. There is a letter to the Bampton Beam here from Toby Hopkins and one from Adrian himself.

The lovely black and white photograph shows Mrs Clark in her shop doorway. The shop was in the High Street on the north side almost opposite Bovington's wet fish shop.

This video club shop was well used and its demise was brought about when the local little supermarket began renting films and it was just too easy to get a film from the supermarket while buying other items.
It was a special outing to rent a film from this shop in Bushey Row and a few people collected the posters that used. Now a film can be downloaded something of the magic of making the special effort to go out and rent a copy has gone.

In the middle of this picture you can see Angela John Antiques on the left and Health Matters on the right. Both were in the Market Square. To the left you can just see the entrance to Market Square Garage. On the right behind the blue car you can see two windows of the what was the WI Hall and later became the Village Hall.

Brian and Siobhan O'Rourke owned the Cotton Club and started it in these premises in Rosemary Lane. It acquired a wonderful reputation and I know one seamstress in South Wales who came once every two months to buy her cotton fabric here. After a few years, the shop went across the road into the right-hand side of Duttons and from there it went to the Market Square in the premises that had once been the Central Garage, then Barclays Bank and it was when the bank left the Cotton Club moved in.

John Temple ran this hardware shop for many years and it was brilliant. He always had a smile on his face and worked very hard to stock items that were really wanted.