AS the year in Wantage began, it was the end of years of waiting and hoping for Wantage Tennis Club members when they won planning permission to develop their old courts in Foliat Drive, Charlton, into homes.

The club had long wanted to move out of the housing estate where residents objected to floodlights, limiting playing time to daylight hours.

Finally in January, Vale of White Horse District Council approved the bid, paving the way for a £500,000 move to the Wantage Recreation Ground in the summer.

In February we revealed that a new Wantage schools partnership had been formed to rival the rapidly-growing Vale Academy Trust led by King Alfred's.

The Springline Partnership of Schools was founded by Fitzwaryn special school, Stockham, Grove C of E and five village primaries to share best practice and training.

More than 1,000 children are set to benefit from the scheme including many who go to more isolated rural schools who now get included in more events and activities.

In March, legendary Wantage fundraiser Ray Collins announced that after years of charity cycles, walks and funfairs as a one-man-band, he was setting up an official charity to help even more people.

After raising more than £100,000 over a decade, Mr Collins hoped that founding the Ray Collins Charitable Trust would help him raise even more over the next ten years.

The new trustees launched the organisation by planning the biggest and best Wantage Carnival yet.

Never far from their minds was the late Maisie Norton, who had previously supported Mr Collins' fundraising efforts for Cancer Research UK.

April was a busy month.

First we revealed that, four years after it closed, mother and daughter team Debbie and Jacqueline Cox were reopening Grove's Volunteer pub.

Then, just weeks after the new owners of Grove Business Park revealed they planned to reboot is as an incubation hub for small local businesses, a slew of companies on the site were up in arms complaining about increased charges and controversial policies.

Finally, the whole of Wantage was outraged by the plans to close the town's community hospital.

Then-mayor StJohn Dickson and other councillors led a campaign against the closure, which Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust said was essential to avoid the risk of a Legionella outbreak.

We breathed a sigh of relief in May when the sisters at the town's Victorian convent announced they were going to stay.

Two years after they began searching for a new, smaller home, more suited to their shrinking community, the 14 sisters decided to try another approach: to invite other people to come and make use of their home.

The initial plan was to let the Oxfordshire Diocese run a teacher training school there, but nothing definite has yet been announced.

May also saw the arrival of a new mayor in Steve Trinder, who pledged to preserve the town's precious green spaces.

Another of the 'last green fields between Wantage and Grove' was revealed to be earmarked for homes in June.

Wantage Town Council confirmed it had been in talking with a London planning consultancy about the field opposite MacDermid Autotype on Grove Road.

It turned out the field was owned by the John Southby Trust based in Buckland near Faringdon, who wanted to sell it off.

However, there was good news for another of Wantage's green spaces that month when £70,000 of new play equipment was officially opened at the recreation ground.

Plans to protect Sir John Betjeman’s former home from future development by officially classifying it as a 'green open space' were publicly opposed by the couple who now live there in July.

Ralph and Sue Cobham said they were not consulted about that element of the Wantage Neighbourhood Plan, despite the fact they helped create the document.

The poet laureate lived at The Mead with his wife Penelope from 1951 until his death in 1984.

The Wantage Neighbourhood Plan was entirely rejected by a planning inspector the next month and Wantage Town Council has now taken the whole process over from the team of residents who originally drew it up.

In August we revealed the frustration of one of Wantage's longest-running shops.

Less than a year after Peter and Jill Hall were forced to move the entire contents of M&A electricals 100 yards down the road to a new shop on Mill Street, they were forced to move the whole lot back again after their new shop was shut by a building inspector.

The couple are now temporarily back at Market Place hoping the disruption will not affect their sales too much.

After years of frustration waiting for a new school to be built in Grove, the body which runs King Alfred's announced in September it was going to do the job itself.

The Vale Academy Trust applied to the Department for Education to open a new 1,000-pupil free school in Grove.

The school would be all-through, taking children from two years old up to 16, but not have a sixth form.

The trust also said it would like the new academy to be Church of England.

More details will be drawn up in 2017.

Wantage was rocked in October by the sudden death of 20-year-old Lewis Mangan.

More than 400 people attended his funeral at the parish church, marching through the town centre with flags of his beloved Oxford United.

The former King Alfred's pupil, who had worked as a chef at Richmond Village care home in Letcombe Regis, died after his car hit a tree near Challow railway bridge on September 30.

In November, the man who ran Wantage's Sweatbox youth club for the best part of 30 years announced he was stepping down.

Garry Kingett, who helped mentor generations of children and kick-start countless musical careers, said he wanted to follow his own musical ambitions, building acoustic guitars and playing more with his band.

It comes as the Sweatbox is set to be demolished along with the rest of King Alfred's East Site to make way for a housing estate.

The school has not yet published its plans for a replacement youth club, although it has promised there will be one.

And the year has ended with the shock announcement that the name Wantage could be changed to Didcot.

Well, the name of the parliamentary constituency at least.

Didcot Town Council submitted the bid to the Boundary Commission, arguing that Didcot is fast becoming the principle town in the constituency which also includes Faringdon and Wallingford.

Wantage MP Ed Vaizey has already conceded that the name should at least be 'Wantage and Didcot', but the issue is fast becoming one of the most controversial of the year among Wantage residents, who aren't so ready to abandon the historic title.

Watch this space.