This telephone directory would have been around 1928 when the telephone exchange was in East St Helen Street.

1. A. G Leach
2. Barclays Bank Limited
3. Alderman A.E Preston
4. Morland & Son
5. Abingdon Borough Surveyor
6. …

Somebody phoning from outside Abingdon would have their number connected by using the place and number such as ‘Abingdon 2’. This allowed calls to be placed initially through the local switchboard operator to the number and later by local or national dialling codes.

Some signs still show the original Abingdon national dialling code of 0235, which became 01235 on 16th April 1995 – known as PhONEday.

P.S. Thank you to Glenn for a picture of his bike bell from Braggs with the number Abingdon 34.

Unless anybody knows better, the last public call box disappeared from Abingdon between November 2020 and September 2021 and was in Ock Street.

On the subject of the last telephones, the last manual telephone exchange, operated by human switchboard operators, was in Abingdon and closed in 1975. (Thank you to gbcovercollector.co.uk for the postmark). The Strowger Appreciation Site has pictures of the exchange.

According to Hooke’s Abingdon Almanack and Directory, the manual telephone exchange moved in with the post office in about 1932. The General Post Office and Telephone Exchange was at 25 High Street from 1932 until 1975, now Wetherspoons.

The Telephone Exchange is now on Stratton Way, but the exchange only takes up the lower floors. The upper floors are housing.

Just to add that the Telephone Exchange was on East St  Helen  Street in the 1920s.

Abingdon Library has started up a Public Wi-Fi Service this week. This will allow the public to use their own wireless devices (laptops, PDAs and smart phones) in the surroundings of Abingdon Library.

This follows a successful pilot at Oxford Central Library.