Wantage

51.588611111111 - 1.4255555555556Koordinaten: 51 ° 35 ' N, 1 ° 26' W

Wantage is a small town and "civil parish" (municipality) in the English county of Oxfordshire. It lies about 25 kilometers south of Oxford in the district of Vale of White Horse and has 9767 inhabitants ( 2001). It is twinned with the German city of Seesen am Harz in Lower Saxony as well as with the community Mably in the French Loire.

History

Because of potsherds were found working in the garden in Wantage, it can be assumed that the place was inhabited in pre-Roman times. (See also the nearby Uffington White Horse. ) Since Wantage is located on the route of an important Roman road from Oxford to the south is to also suspect that the place was a Roman settlement. However, at larger historical fame to the place helped a 849 AD -born son of the city, King Alfred the Great. It is worth mentioning that one of the hands of the statue of Alfred the Great was removed by unknown persons in 2007. Despite camera monitoring of the entire marketplace, not a perpetrator could be determined.

Economy

Wantage has the typical for a well- visited tourist city infrastructure: There are museums, a good -quality restaurants and quite a lot of arts and crafts. The year 1982 saw the birth of an early protagonists of the UK solar industry. The first quite small company " Crystalox Ltd.. " began in Wantage with the development of crystal growing systems, but was only three years later taken over by the Norwegian company Elkem ASA. The opposite industrial settlements not very open-minded Wantage was abandoned as the site soon. In the nineties " Crystalox " bought from " Elkem " free again and was devoted mainly to the development and manufacture of production equipment for the production of polycrystalline ingots, before the company finally became the supplier of various wafer and solar cell producers in Germany and Japan. After years of collaboration with the " PV Silicon AG" in Erfurt, it was decided in 2002 to establish a joint venture and was the middle of June 2007, his stock market debut as "PV Crystalox Solar PLC " based in the neighboring town of Abingdon.