A planning application (P26/V0517/FUL) has been submitted for the former Barclays Bank building at No. 2 The Square in Abingdon, together with redevelopment of the buildings behind.

The proposal would convert the existing ground, first and second floors into eight flats (seven one-bedroom and one two-bedroom). It also includes the demolition of the historic Baileys shoe repairs behind, to be replaced with a new two-storey building providing four additional units (three one-bedroom flats and one one-bedroom unit with a loft space).

No. 2 The Square is a Grade II listed building, while the buildings behind are of later construction but could be treated as listed by association.

The building was decommissioned in March 2024 under an earlier planning approval (P24/V0109/FUL), allowing the removal of banking fixtures such as the ATM. However, from my reading, it remained within commercial use rather than changing to residential use.

This latest application therefore seeks permission to change the use to residential, along with the physical changes together with the demolition and rebuild of buildings behind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Before the Radley Reach development, a public footpath ran from Twelve Acre Drive, through woodland and across open fields, to the hilltop walk between Lodge Hill and Radley College. During construction, the original entrance was fenced off and a diversion put in place.

Today I noticed the original entry point from Twelve Acre Drive is open again. The path passes through woodland and along the new streets of Monastery Garden and Prior Close, with signs marked Public Right of Way – Footpath Route.

However, the route doesn’t connect up yet. At the end of Prior Close it runs into an active building site, which a workman confirmed is not open to the public.

For now, walkers still need to use the original diversion, which is no longer signed and very muddy.

I am guessing that the newly signed route should be open in a month or so.

The scaffolding at 3 West St Helen Street has finally come down. It first went up in October 2024 when the building was found to be dangerous. There followed a long wait before work could begin to demolish and rebuild the end wall.

That reconstruction is now complete, and while the fencing and the blue site box remain for the moment, they should soon be removed, bringing to an end more than a year of disruption.

Before its closure, the ground floor was used by Pappy’s Afro-Caribbean Cuisine, which had only been open there for nine months. Three residents also lived in the flats above. Around twenty years ago the building housed Glendales, an electrical goods shop. We will now have to wait and see whether Pappy’s returns.

Here is how the building looked three weeks ago, as work on the wall neared completion: