The station originally opened as part of an attempt by the Great Western Railway to enable to have more passengers access to the line, at a time when competition from bus services was drawing away patronage.

On 24 October 1864 the Wycombe Railway opened an extension of its single track line from Thame to Kennington junction, about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of Oxford.

[7] By 1926, Morris Motors, based in Cowley since 1913, employed some 4,000 workers on their plant which covered some 80 acres (320,000 m2) and produced 1,000 cars per week.

Morris decided to concentrate the packing of cars for export at Cowley, the bulk of which would be moved to port by rail.

Two sidings were installed in March 1926 to serve the adjacent Pressed Steel Company factory and five more were added in July 1928 for Morris Motors.

[6] During the Second World War the fields around Cowley were used for the storage of scrap aircraft parts and were depicted in Paul Nash's painting Totes Meer (Dead Sea).

[11] At this time, the factories at Cowley were used for the manufacture of new aircraft and the freight facilities there were substantially extended to handle the extra traffic, including the laying of two new private sidings in 1940 and 1943.

A road-rail freight transfer terminal was opened on the site of the old goods shed in May 1984 by David Mitchell, Under-Secretary of State for Transport.

A new loading terminal was opened and five weekly double-deck car-carrying trains run from the plant, each carrying 264 cars to Purfleet in Essex for onward shipping to Zeebrugge.

[20] In November 2017, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, allocated £300,000 to develop a study to look at how new routes, services and stations could be built in Oxfordshire.

[22] In January 2024, £500,000 was allocated by Oxford City Council to create designs for stations at Littlemore and Blackbird Leys.