Author Archives: Backstreeter

Nuclear Ban – five years on

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Nuclear Ban
At 12 noon on Thursday, the Abingdon Peace Group gathered in the Market Place to mark five years since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons became international law, in January 2021.

Back in 2021, with Covid about, the group held a socially distanced event in a mostly deserted Market Place.
Nuclear Ban
This week’s gathering echoed that earlier moment, but without the masks. Progress has been made since the treaty came into force. 74 nation states — more than half the countries of the world — have ratified it. The UK has not signed up.

Behind the treaty stands the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Its campaigning helped bring the treaty into being, and in 2017 ICAN’s work was recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize. More information is available at www.icanw.org.

More New Road Names at Abbey Fields and The Meadows

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More New Roads
In The Meadows at Abbey Fields, the David Wilson Homes development, several of the roads are named after businesses with long associations with Abingdon. A new one to me is Holmes Mews.
More New Roads
Percy Holmes was Mayor of Abingdon in 1953 and belonged to a family long associated with the town through P. Holmes & Son, bakers with shops in Ock Street and Bath Street.
More New Roads
Nearby in The Meadows is a new children’s play area. When I visited last summer it was still behind fencing. It has now opened.
More New Roads
On the neighbouring Abbey Fields estate, a Barratt Homes development, are a couple of other road names that seem to be fairly new. One of these is Crane Avenue. Rhoda Crane, known as Sue, served as a town councillor from 1987 to 1995 and was Mayor of Abingdon in 1993–94. She took a particular interest in town twinning.
More New Roads
Another is Pickering Close. Dorothea Pickering was an educator and spiritual pioneer in Abingdon. She bought a house in East St Helen Street and moved her preparatory school there from The Vineyard, where it continued until 1967. In the 1970s she re-imagined the house as a spiritual centre, naming it St Ethelwold’s after the Abbot of Abingdon Abbey.

Flags Waiting for Better Weather

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Flags Waiting
Thirty-nine flags line the lamp posts of Saxton Road and its side courts – mostly Union Jacks, with a few St George’s Crosses. Only one lamp post has been missed.
Flags Waiting
Today many of them are wet, clinging to their posts. I could wait for better weather to capture them as I saw them yesterday, when they made a fine display.
Flags Waiting
There are also the usual flag displays in back gardens, proudly shown along the road. So there are a lot more than thirty nine.

Two Road closures in Abingdon town centre

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Road Closed
Last week I reported that West St Helen Street had closed. Although it reopened on Friday after some initial digging, the road closed again on Sunday.
Road Closed
The current works are more extensive, with four deep trenches dug down to the gas mains.
Road Closed
Winsmore Lane, another road in the town centre, is also closed. This could be Abingdon’s narrowest traffic road, carrying single-lane traffic to the back of some businesses and a few residences. The closure is for electricity works, likely connected to the redevelopment of the former Lloyds Bank building.

Businesses and residents can still access Winsmore Lane via St Edmunds Lane, where a bollard has been temporarily removed to allow entry.

Winsmore Lane takes its name from a family who owned part of Banbury Court until 1713 (1). Banbury Court was a substantial property of medieval origin located in this area near the River Ock – not the Banbury Court flats on the Vineyard.

1 – Baker, Agnes C. (1957). Historic Streets of Abingdon. Abingdon: The Abbey Press, p. 28.