Culham is a village and civil parish in a bend of the River Thames, 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Abingdon in Oxfordshire.

The parish is bounded by the Thames to the north, west and south, and by present and former field boundaries to the east.

It is low-lying and fairly flat, rising from the Thames floodplain in the south to a north-facing escarpment in the north up to 260 feet (80 m) above sea level.

Culham is known to have existed by the reign of King Coenwulf of Mercia early in the 9th century, by which time the manor belonged to Abingdon Abbey.

Soon after the Norman conquest of England part of the manor was seized by William the Conqueror, but the land was restored to the abbey and remained in its possession until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538.

It was cruciform, having a chancel, nave and north and south transepts, and had features from the Early English and Decorated periods.

In 1852 the whole church except the 1710 tower was demolished and replaced with a new Gothic Revival building in 13th century style designed by Joseph Clarke.

The skirmish, known as the Battle of Culham Bridge, ended in a Parliamentarian victory and the Royalist commander Sir Henry Gage was mortally wounded.

[3] In 1844 the Great Western Railway opened an extension from Didcot to Oxford, passing through the eastern part of the parish.

The GWR opened a station on the main road and called it Culham, although it is 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) east of the village, slightly nearer to Clifton Hampden.

[15] The college became Culham Institute,[16] a charitable research organisation associated with the Church of England housed in the Educational Studies Department of Oxford University.

A Royal Observer Corps Post was also constructed, in a field east of Tollgate Road, adjacent to a pre existent Pillbox, just up the hill from the rifle range, next to the river.

The former airfield is now the Culham Science Centre,[19] an 800,000 square metre scientific research site that most notably includes two major nuclear fusion experiments: JET and MAST.