[4][5] The City of Oxford corporation, which thirty years earlier had opposed the railway, offered a lease on Cripley Meadow for the workshops.
[2] A contract for the Cripley Meadow site was already in place, but a change in leadership at GWR meant that the workshops were built at Swindon instead.
Over the following years, the city engineer organized the deposit of street refuse on the site to raise its level above the river.
[7] Since 2012, the Castle Mill site (400 m by 25 m) between the Cripley Meadow Allotments[8] and the railway tracks is being developed as extensive student accommodation for the Oxford University Estates Directorate by Longcross.
[10] The development of Castle Mill has been controversial since the four- and five-storey blocks overlook Port Meadow.