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:

If you were drinking coffee outside Throwing Buns this week, you’d have overheard the theories about the rope-dangling antics above the County Hall Museum. Are they human pigeon scarers, a new art installation, rehearsals for ‘Strictly Come Dangling’ or what?.

More likely, they are inspecting the stone façade up close, checking the carvings and mortar.

One of their tools looks like a moisture meter for detecting damp within the stone and mortar, finding any problems before time and weather can do more harm.

For over a year, the corner building on West St Helen Street has been supported by scaffolding and surrounded by sandbags after its side wall became unstable. This September, the old unsafe wall was finally demolished.

This October, work began to rebuild it. A new structure is taking shape — breeze blocks for the inside wall and a brick frontage to match the rest of the building.

It’s good to see such steady progress after such a long wait. Over the years, quite a few long-standing issues in central Abingdon, highlighted here and elsewhere, have now been tackled. One exception is the Upper Reaches Hotel.

Work at 3 West St Helen Street has been ongoing for two weeks now. The building’s end wall has been taken down and the scaffolding on that side removed, revealing the plastic sheeting that now covers the exposed section. This is the most visible progress on the project in a year.