Old Abbey House is boarded up as redevelopment starts.

Daniel has been able to get a higher view over the fence showing the scaffolding.

He even has a view of the roof.

For the history of Old Abbey House there is the Abingdon Buildings and People site. A quick summary:

• Old Abbey House probably built by wealthy businessman James Smallbone about 1780
• Edwin Trendell, wine merchant, lived there from 1847 to 1900 and extended the house and developed the garden
• The Rt Revd James Leslie Randall, Bishop of Reading, lived there until 1920
• Abingdon Borough Council, Vale of White Horse District Council and Abingdon Town Council worked there from the 1920s until 2014
• From 2021/2 it will become a hotel

For more of Daniel’s aerial shots you can visit his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/danielgloverdrone

Daniel has been filming, from the skies, the new development off the Dunmore Road. The outlines of the first properties are visible as squares or rectangles.

He has also been flying over South Abingdon where the sewage treatment works are next to the Drayton Road Allotments which are next to a quarry.

When I walk or cycle round the sewage treatment works the overwhelming impression is the fizzy sulfurous smell, but from the sky you see circles.

Hoarding panels are being put up round the front of Old Abbey House.

Before being left empty in 2014 it was the home of Abingdon Town Council and the Citizens Advise Bureau. The Ede Group from Witney were the winning bidders for the property, purchased from Vale of White Horse District Council, and plan to turn it into a 20-bedroom hotel. Some work is needed to secure parts of the roof to keep the building from further damage. In their press release in February Ede Group said they look forward to ‘working with the planners to come up with an appropriate hotel scheme, whilst also restoring the building to its former glory.’

The best pictures I can take walking round the new development by the Dunmore Road is to show heaps of earth and piles of pipes. This picture is taken from Tilsley Park with the houses of Dunmore Road behind.

From the Wootton Road the first houses can be seen going up.

But Daniel with his Bird’s Eye View gets something much better.

This is the view looking from Tilsley Park towards the Wootton Road with the existing houses of Dunmore Road top left.

This is the view of the development entrance and the first houses. Daniel hopes to return fairly frequently to show progress from the air.