There will be an all day symposium on Saturday 18th July 2015 at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on ‘Abingdon and its Prehistoric Earthworks’.

The final lecture by Dr Zena Kamash will be about discoveries at Spring Road Cemetery. The pictures above shows the site in 2000 during excavation, and in 2015 with the new Garden of Remembrance.

The cemetery was created from agricultural land in 1940, and during the early years so many ancient graves were being disturbed to create new graves that it was decided to do some proper excavations before all the evidence got lost.

The Abingdon Area Archaeological and Historical, in conjunction with the Ashmolean Museum, is making a contribution to the National Festival of Archaeology 2015 by holding this one day free event in the Headley Lecture Theatre, Ashmolean Museum.

The Full Programme:
10:15 Dr. Gill Hey: Introduction
10:30 George Lambrick: The Drayton Cursus and other Monuments in the Development of Prehistoric Ceremonial and Funerary Complexes in the Upper Thames Valley.
11.30 Dr. Frances Healy: A Brief Life: placing the Abingdon Causewayed Enclosure in Time.
12.30 Lunch Break.
Time to look round a display of finds in the Ashmolean reserve collections from Barrow Hills, the Abingdon Causewayed Enclosure and other sites of relevance to Abingdon.
14.00 Dr. Alistair Barclay: Barrow Hills Excavation: thirty years on.
15.00 Dr. Zena Kamash: Excavations at Spring Road Cemetery, a Bronze Age Pit Circle and other discoveries.

Thanks to Christine for letting me know about this event, and Elizabeth for the 2nd picture.

The latest Oxfordshire Blue Plaque has been unveiled at a large house near the Albert Monument, on Park Crescent in Abingdon. It commemorates Arthur Edwin Preston (1852–1942) Mayor, antiquarian, and historian of Abingdon.

His house is now owned and used by Abingdon School, and the plaque was unveiled on Friday by Jackie Smith, Honorary Archivist of Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council, in the presence of The Mayor of Abingdon, the Master of Christ’s Hospital, the Head of Abingdon School, the Chairman of the Vale, among others.

“Arthur Preston made an extraordinary contribution both as a borough and county councillor and as an antiquarian who preserved the record of Abingdon’s history and restored its ancient buildings … (read on here)”

1864-5 Albert Park laid out by the charity Christ’s Hospital of Abingdon.
1865 Monument to Prince Albert, designed by J Gibbs, completed.
1867 St Michael’s Church, designed by G Scott, completed.
1870 Roysses School, designed by E Dolby, completed.
1875 Trinity Methodist Church, designed by W Woodman, completed.

Gothic houses in the North-Oxford style were set out around the park forming a fine Victorian residential area –

with gated private roads.

And from 28th June 2015, 150 years after the monument was unveiled, a new book about the park will become available. It is still possible to become a founding subscriber and have your name printed in the book. Address queries to albertparkra@gmail.com.

Near the end of Audlett Drive

you will find  Barrow Hills Recreation Area, a place that has not seen much council investment in the last few decades. It has a rundown BMX Track featured in 2006 , an area for football, and a very uneven car park. The area is mostly used by dog walkers who can set out in the direction of Thrupp Lane.

One route passes through an area of very regular woodland with the exception of one bent tree,

then across a field with some larger trees to the south, and then skirts an Old Coal Yard (in Radley Parish) just before Thrupp Lane. I am guessing that this was the local coal distribution centre run by the coal board.

I read in the History of Ock Street that T Enoch & Son, of 75 Ock Street, was the last coal merchant in Abingdon. They closed in the 1990s having operated for about 100 years. In the 1970s there were three coal merchants in Abingdon. Go back to the 1960s and most families would have a coal storage area, and took a regular delivery of coal.