Seen from below the finial balls gave symmetry and elegance to the balustrade round the County Hall roof.
From above, I sometimes thought, they got in the way of a good view.
When architects were assessing the work needed on the County Hall roof they found the finial balls were not secure enough. As a result they have been removed, probably until 2012.
The roof has also been closed to the public because of Health and Safety concerns. Better safe than sorry I am afraid.
The ſ (or long s) in St John’s Hoſpital, which looks like our modern f, died out in the decade before and after 1800 according to a wiki article on Long_s . The way fs were increasingly being written back then led to confusion and so ſ was replaced by s.
All of that is just an aſide to the main purpose of this blog post which is to point out that the entrance to St John’s Hoſpital, the almſhouses on the Vineyard, is being refaſhioned at present.
There is a well thumbed copy of Pevsner’s 1966 study of Berkshire architecture in the local studies reference section of Abingdon library. There are 11 pages about Abingdon. Pevsner has a controversial turn of phrase…
1. St Nicholas – An odd west front
2. Trinity – full-blown churchy…fussy Geometrical tracery
3. County Hall – Of the free-standing town halls of England this is the grandest – grander decidedly that Windsor
4. Old Police Station – A plain, honest job
5. Free Library – too tall to be credible or suitable within the scale of Abingdon
6. Abingdon School – high, clumsy and Gothic
7. Old Gaol – impressive enough by itself; the siting is unpardonable.
8. Corn Exchange – no definite style nor alas personality
9. Abingdon Bridge – the view towards St Helens church is lovely, or would be, if it were not for the Old Gaol
10. Queens Hotel – unbelievably joyless
(The Corn Market and Queens Hotel got demolished soon after – unable to carry on after Pevsner.)
In 2010 a fully revised and rewritten Pevsner’s Berkshire has been published.
Abingdon is still in Berkshire, not Oxfordshire according to this book. (Abingdon was transferred to Oxfordshire 8 years after Pevsner but many still keep the faith and will be glad of this keeping with tradition.)
There was a walk round some of our great Abingdon buildings yesterday organised by Mostly Books- taken by the author of the new Pevsner. The new book looks much bigger than the original. It is better researched. A few of Pevsner’s more whimsical judgements have been removed, but most are still in. The new author recognises their charm.