Military and Aviation Oxfordshire

World Wars 1 and 2
Sources held at Oxfordshire History Centre.
Oxfordshire History Centre does not hold the official service records of individual servicemen or military units.
World War One
Records relating to recruitment and mobilisation
Britain officially entered the war at 11pm on 4 August 1914. The nation’s resources needed to be mobilised to support the war effort.
The contemporary minute books of the Oxford Territorial Army Association (reference O11) provide a fascinating insight into these first hours and days of the war.
Records relating to relief from the effects of war at home
There was great concern that the outbreak of war might cause unemployment and hardship to the families of the fighting men.
The minute books of the Oxford Citizens Emergency Committee (OCA1/29) in Oxford City Archive contain a wealth of information and statistics on local economic and social conditions.
The minute book of the Bampton East Petty Sessional Division War Relief Fund Sub Committee (B2/X2/1) contains a list of Belgian refugees.
Records relating to military service
The Military Service Act
The Military Service Act of January 1916 introduced conscription for the first time. The Act required local tribunals to be held to consider exemptions. Hearings regularly took place in public and were reported in the local press.
The majority of Local Tribunal records were destroyed after the war but a minute book survives for Banbury Borough 1916-1918 (BOR2/2/14/A1/1).  The most comprehensive survival of records is for Witney where we hold a minute book 1915-1918 (UDC4/9/A1/1) a register of proceedings, and a register of cases (UDC9/R1/2).
The Oxford City Archive contains files of papers of the Oxford Local Military Tribunal 1915-18 ((OCA5/3/C9, OCA5/1/C6) and a Fair Minute Book 1917-18 (OCA1/32/A1/1). These include a large amount of personal information relating to individual applications and appeals for exemption from military service, There is also an interesting private collection of Military Tribunal Papers (P327) collected by an individual who attended local hearings as a representative of the Ministry of National Service.
Records of service men and military units
These are held either at the National Archives or the Ministry of Defence. The Imperial War Museum  Department of Documents holds wartime correspondence and diaries of many servicemen. The RAF Museum at Hendon also holds many private records.
Information about local regiments is available from the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock and the Royal Green Jackets Museum  in Winchester.
World War Two
Records of local government
Local authorities played a key role in national Civil Defence plans.
Key records of the County Council’s overall responsibility for Civil Defence are:
* Minutes and reports of the Air Raid Precautions Committee 1938-1939 (CC1/26)
* County Emergency Committee for Civil Defence 1939-1945 (CC1/27)
* County Defence/Invasion Committee 1941-1945 (CC1/28)
There are sections on war and Civil Defence in:
* Chipping Norton Borough Archives (BOR1/36)
* Woodstock Borough Archives (BOR4/31/5)
* Register of War Damaged Property for the Witney area (RDC12/2/R4/1)
* Register of Evacuees for the Henley area (RDC8/5/R3/1)
* Invasion Committee War Books for the parishes of Kirtlington and Spelsbury (Kirtlington (PC157/A4/1 & PC246/A1/1).
* Various Oxford City committee minutes, including the ARP, Evacuation and Emergency committees (OCA1/59, OCA1/69 and OCA1/70
The effects of the war could be found in other records, such as the housing plans for Kidlington Garden City which include air raid shelters (RDC10/3/Y1/44).
The Oxford City Archives contain Air Raid Precaution and Civil Defence records (OCA8), such as a register showing the author and academic J R R Tolkien enlisting as an ARP Warden in 1941 (OCA8/1/PL1/2). The City Engineer’s records include a series of plans of control rooms, 1939-1940 (OCA3/1/Y35/26.
Records relating to organisations
The Home Guard
There were six Home Guard companies in Oxfordshire. The Papers of the Oxford Territorial Army Association (O11) includes a section on the Oxfordshire Home Guard. There is also an important collection of records for the Garsington Section (4th Battalion, Section 1) of the Home Guards (P396). This provides a vivid insight into their work.
Other organisations
The Oxford Fire Fighters and Watchers were set up in 1941 by local businesses to protect their properties and watch for incendiary attacks. Their minute book (O144) records details of their work. The records of the Baldon Women’s Institute Fruit Preservation Centre (O173) provide a further example of the activities of a local group committed to the war effort.
Private collections
Sometimes important collections remain in private hands and it is worth checking the catalogues of private papers. The Wantage Evacuation Papers (P3) were created by the Chief Billeting Officer of Wantage UDC and were kept by him. They contain a large amount of information on individual householders and evacuees.
Local administrative records
Records of official and unofficial organizations give an insight into the impact of the wars on the local community.
There could be comments in parish service registers and minutes, or school logbooks and admission registers. Our schools collections include some admission registers for schools evacuated from London to Oxfordshire during the war.
Both Wars
War Memorials
War Memorials were erected across the county after the ending of the First World War.  Many local War Memorial Committees were formed across Oxfordshire and records of these are held in our Parish Councils collections.  Records can also be found in Parish collections and include faculties and original drawings of the memorial design.  
Information about War Graves can be obtained from the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.


What role did the people of Oxford play during times of war?
For hundreds of years, war and conflict have been part of the fabric of Oxford’s stories: through Oxfordshire people’s experiences of it, and through the effect it has had on Oxford’s physical appearance. This was true too throughout the 1900s, when Oxford was irrevocably impacted by multiple wars: the First World War, Spanish Civil War, Second World War, and Cold War.
First World War
The ‘Great War’ created and highlighted extensive connections between Oxford and the wider world. Not only did many men and women from Oxford travel overseas to serve, Belgian refugees also arrived in Oxford, and people from all over the world were sent from the war’s Western Front to be treated in Oxfordshire.
The war brought tangible changes to Oxford’s infrastructure. 3rd Southern General Hospital was located in a variety of the city’s buildings, including the Town Hall and the university’s Examination Schools. Port Meadow was turned into an aerodrome for the Royal Flying Corps. Botley Cemetery saw the addition of more than a hundred Imperial War Graves Commission burials: soldiers who had died in hospital.


The people of Oxford experienced the conflict in many different ways. Many had relatives who were serving overseas, and kept in touch with them through letters. Others were University of Oxford students, for whom the war elicited very strong beliefs; including Constance Coltman, who was a pacifist and became the first female Christian minister in the UK; Hardit Singh Malik, who fought racial prejudice to became the first Indian fighter pilot; and Rajani Palme Dutte, who was a conscientious objector. The war also prompted Oxford people to respond artistically. One of Oxford’s most famous examples is the poet May Wedderburn Cannan, who published two volumes of poetry about the war and its aftermath; she had volunteered at the front and also lost her fiancé, and later detailed her wartime experiences and grief in her autobiography. For her, and many others, life in Oxford could not just resume after the war; people had to adjust to new realities.
Spanish Civil War
Between 1936-39, approximately 35,000 people from 50 countries went to Spain to join the International Brigades, a combatant organisation supporting the Spanish Republicans against a fascist attempt by a group called the Nationalists to overthrow the government. 31 volunteers from Oxfordshire were among those supporting the Brigades, and six of them died: Anthony Carritt, Edward Cooper, Lewis Clive, Herbert Fisher, Ralph Fox, and John Rickman. In June 2017, a memorial to these volunteers was unveiled in Oxford in St Clement’s, outside South Park: it depicts a fist crushing a scorpion, representing democracy quashing the ‘poison’ of fascism. The war ended in 1939 when the Nationalists won, and their leader General Franco ruled Spain until his death in 1975.
Second World War
Oxford was particularly affected by the aerial aspect of the Second World War. The county became home to numerous training airfields for glider pilots and bomber crews, and also provided repairs for fighter planes. In 1939 the Air Ministry had designated Cowley as one of six depots for aircraft repair in the country. The airfields became bombing targets for German planes, causing military and civilian deaths as well as significant structural damage. The people of Oxford also endured the hardships of wartime experienced throughout the country: blackouts, rationing, and preparations for the invasion, including forming a Home Guard. Oxford’s Home Guard was ‘the 6th Oxfordshire Battalion,’ and one of their most significant roles was to guard factories, railway stations, and gas works at night.
As the people of Oxford said goodbye to their loved ones – men and women – who had left to serve, they also welcomed newcomers: evacuees, mainly children. Oxford’s allotted evacuees largely arrived grouped according to school, and by 6 September 1939 the county had welcome 19,830 official refugees. Villages throughout Oxfordshire, including Hailey and Finstock accepted two waves of evacuees in 1939 and 1940. The fabric of our community has always been changing, not static; these Second World War examples are amongst many over Oxford’s hundreds of years of history, including up to the present day.
Cold War
The decades after the Second World War saw another kind of conflict; the Cold War. This did not result in Oxfordshire deaths or involvement in outright conflict, but saw significant anticipatory preparations occur. Archival documents reveal the detailed plans that were drawn up calculating predicted death rates should there be a nuclear attack on Oxford. Air raid shelters were also constructed throughout the city, based on population estimates of how many people would need to be safely housed by them if an attack were to occur during peak shopping and travelling hours.
The threat of nuclear war also necessitated plans for how to manage emergency operations. From 1954, the Civil Defense organised new training and equipment in hopes of best responding to the unique challenges that a nuclear attack would present. The Corps was divided into Headquarters Sections, each of which were equipped with mobile control centres and means for repairing communication lines and measuring radiation in the area.
Cold War fears necessitated new additions to the Oxford landscape, above and below ground. Underground bunkers were commissioned to serve as headquarters for observer corps; one such bunker was built in 1965 on James Wolfe Road in Cowley, and was still in use until 1992. Above ground, the former First World War air force base at Upper Heyford became a significant tactical and command centre for the US Air Force in the 1960s-70s, housing bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. The base was not closed until the 1990s; it has since been the subject of a failed attempt to award it status as a protected heritage site.

For more information please go to https://museumofoxford.org/oxford-at-war-in-the-20th-century