Author Archives: Backstreeter

Housing Development Developments

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I went down to Dunmore Road to check out on the progress of the housing developments: Abbey Fields and Kings Gate.

There will be no more wheat harvests in Abbey Fields. Instead there are likely to be grass lawns, a variety of flowers, bushes and trees between houses. There could even be a few small ponds.

At Kings Gatey I was interested to see how builders make bow windows using breeze blocks. It is rough inside and a smooth outside.

A lot of the chestnut trees were cut down in front of Kings Gate. The ones that remain have made a lot of conkers.

Abingdon Scout hut bird murals

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In the 2nd Abingdon Scout Group hut, there are bird murals painted on the walls by Jim Humphreys, a scout leader for many years. I saw Jim in town today and he mentioned the murals being shown on the internet by the Sunningwell School of Art, where he also paints. He gave me permission to borrow them for the Abingdon Blog.

Jim is a keen ornithologist and has done several birds including a Kingfisher

and an Osprey.

Jim is also one the Abingdon Guild of Town Criers, and part of the Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers (normally as a fool) and a performer in the mummers’ plays.

Runaway Fair

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The Runaway Fair is the smaller fair, with children’s rides, on the Monday one week after the Michaelmas Fair.

The fair looked fairly busy today when children had finished school (see picture above).

It is called the runaway fair because:
a) children often runaway from school to go to the runaway fair.
b) adults used to runaway from employment taken at the Michaelmas hiring Fair and found new employment at the Runaway hiring fair.
c) a few childrens’ rides runaway from the main Michaelmas fair and come back to Abingdon.