I am always interested to discover old Abingdon poems and verses and recently found a verse in a book on The Abingdon Fire Service (1871 – 1945) by John Hooke.

During WWII the Abingdon Fire Service helped in the national effort and went to faraway places to put out the fires after the Blitz bombing. They arrived in Coventry after a 60 mile journey. It was complete chaos. ‘See those Almshouses, Leslie, the incendiaries have only just started their work of destruction. We could put them out with a drop of water – but there is no water in the mains. Look out! A stick of bombs fall on the cross roads where we had been standing only seconds before, two firemen just disappear.’

Town fire services were nationalised for greater efficiency and central control and to ensure uniform standards. The Abingdon Fire Service became part of National Fire Service No 15 (Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire).

Getting water appeared a problem for the fire service. In Abingdon a static water tank was put in the Market Square and at first was a mystery. A verse appeared in the North Berks Herald and is reprinted in the book …

A hole has appeared in the Market Square!
Now who in the deuce could have put it there?
Everyone is ‘hollering out’
And asking ‘What is it all about?’
The ‘whole thing’ seems extremely rum
Oh! is it an aquarium?
To give the girls and boys a start
At practising piscatorial art.
Or is it an act to surprise the nation
An archaeological excavation
By using subterranean measures
To expose some prehistoric treasures?
Or maybe a Lido they’ll install
(High diving from the old Town Hall!)
With bathing and basking in the sun
At weekends, or when work is done,
But that, we have no doubt, would send
The elders off at the deepest end
And give their brows a permanent frown
(With Victoria looking benignly down).
Someone says it’s for static water
And not a pond for your son and daughter.
If that be so it seems so queer
With Father Thames so very near.
Moreover the scheme appears unsound
With such a limited parking ground,
Unless to cater for the pranks
Of the latest type amphibious tanks!
‘Tis hoped material will be found
The whole contraption to surround
To keep the kids from falling in
Or else your troubles will begin
The fence should be a wooden paling
Or the salvage collector will be ‘railing.’
In time they’ll lay the mystery bare
And you, with me, the scheme will share
And then you’ll known why it is there
The cavity in the Market Square.

In 1951 Phyllis Dawson Clark wrote a poem about the River Ock that flows throgh the Vale of White Horse to Abingdon. Here is the first stanza:

Down from the chalky range of Berkshire hills
Stamped with the cave-man’s god, a lean white horse;
Through rustling cornfields, by a dozen mills
Whose wheels are long since rusty, and across
A thistle wast where winter storms have laid
To rest the hollow trunks, where brittle rot
Harbours the comfrey seedlings that have strayed;
Where centuries of blue forget-me-not
Have sighed away their days unseen, alone,
And sprays of blushing dog-rose bend to kiss
Their own reflection in a pool that’s known
A thousand summers just as sweet as this, —
By the wild rhubarb leaves and giant dock,
Under the willow arches flows the winding Ock.

The Mill Stream was the first blog entry I did about Abingdon ten years ago today. I intended writing a blog about Abingdon in 2006 for one year, and called it Abingdon 2006, but then in 2007 I carried on with The Abingdon Blog. So now it is ten years old.