In 2006 crowds went to the Conduit Centre to see a weekend exhibition called The Ock Street Exhibition. Before the 1930s slum clearances about two thirds of Abingdon lived around Ock Street.

The 2006 exhibition comprised pictures and snippets of text on display boards.

It is back – creatively redone – using the County Hall Museum display cases.

The Christmas stage has been retained and converted into the interior of an Ock Street Kitchen.

One lady recalls “”Our cottage had two rooms, one up and one down, the only door opened into the downstairs room and the stairs went out of that room into the bedroom. There was a pocket-handkerchief sized garden, and across the other side of that was a wash house.“

This display shows Stimpson the Grocer, located where Dominoes Pizza now does business.

There were artifacts such as this penny farthing made by Coxeters – still a shop name in Abingdon.

On Saturday there was a gathering of the clans when people who had helped create this exhibition came to share their memories. One lady said that this was the first time in all these years she had been up to the museum.

The exhibition is on until Wednesday 27 February 2008.

Ock Street Remembered – NEW BOOK AVAILABLE SOON – An Abingdon Community

This building was once a pub but is now the Royal British Legion Club and HQ.

In the function room beside the bar, George Haslam was tonight conducting his Abingdon Big Band – ‘Swingtime’.

The British Legion Club and HQ is about to be ‘refurbished’

and ,by about Easter, will be ready again

should George return blowing his whistle on ‘track twenty-nine‘ on the Chattanooga choo choo.

Albert and Walter (two six-year old horses) were in town giving rides along Abbey Close to wedding guests at the Guildhall.

Save Radley Lakes tombola was also in town.

Last week brought floods, explosions, fire, and traffic jams.

Some old Abingdonians were disturbed and sat upright thinking they heard the old town calling them to duty. But it was too strange. The long line of traffic meant nothing to them.

Gordon Roger’s last front page as the Abingdon reporter was about the Almshouses needing £1m. Reroofing +. Gordon may have been the last journalist dedicated to reporting exclusively on Abingdon. He talked to people: getting to know what was going on. He became part of the order of the town.

The graves have been settled down again, and secured, and await reconsecration. But it was like a warning things are getting out of order.