I have this old Valentine Post Card showing a cannon in Albert Park facing Trinity Church – a line of site that is nowadays obscured by bushes and trees. I think somebody said the cannon got melted down during WWII along with a lot of railings round the church.

Looking across the Abingdon School playing field, a magnolia partly hides the church and Trinity House, next door, which now has a new two storey extension and is being sympathetically refurbished.

According to D.B.Tranter’s History of Trinity, John Creemer Clarke ( a founding member of Trinity, clothing manufacturer, and MP) bought Trinity House on a nine-hundred year lease in 1873 for use as a church manse, and when he died it was given in trust to the Church and served as manse until the 1970s.

From that time it has been a private home, unlike a lot of the large houses round Albert Park which are too big for modern families.

The work at 1-3 Ock Street is nearing completion. The building was once the Probation Office in Abingdon.

Kemp & Kemp have taken it on and have been restoring the building, sympathetically, to be their new offices.

They are to bury a time capsule under the floor to the building capturing ‘life in Abingdon today’ as well as telling the story of the building. Suggestions very welcome.

People are stopping to look at the new heritage trail information board that appeared in West St Helen’s Street yesterday.

The first picture on the board is a drawing of St Helen’s Church and shows the Half Moon pub of 1755, and next door – Hyde’s Draper, Grocer and Ready made Clothes’ shop.

Ready made clothes must have taken off because the next picture on the board shows Hyde’s (later Clarke’s) clothing factory dominating the street near St Helen’s Church

The board is one of five new heritage boards at our end of the town centre. They were organised by Ann Berkeley, researched by members of the Abingdon Archaeological and Historical Society, and financed by The National Lottery, Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council, and Choose Abingdon.