When Edward I brought the body of his dead Queen Eleanor of Castile from Harby, Nottinghamshire to be buried in Westminster Abbey in 1290, he had a cross erected at the place where the procession rested each night. Only three, of the original twelve remain, and the one at Waltham had a sculpture, of Queen Eleanor, by Alexander of Abingdon.

To help protect her for the future, the original scuplture has been loaned by Hertfordshire  to the V&A and can be seen currently (April 2012) in Room 10 – Medieaval and Renaissance art.

Another sculpture, Virgin and Child, attributed to Alexander of Abingdon is to be found in the Metropolitan Art Gallery in New York. It was found in Newbury very recently – in the 1980s.

Alexander could well have learned his craft at Abingdon Abbey, and in Oxford, before becoming a maker of images for the court of King Edward I.  So if you happen to see any sculpture of that style with heavy flowing drapery, perhaps an early work, it would be good to get the next one for the Town of Abingdon.

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Mark Steel came to Abingdon to talk at the Amey Theatre in Abingdon School.

The comedy act was tailored to Abingdon where he had been out and about for some hours, and read the Abingdon Herald report on Abingdon United’s goal drought.

He is pictured here with Jenny who did a lot of the organising of the evening for the Abingdon Arts Festival.

Mark likes local grassroots traditions and had fun with ours: Bun Throwing, and then Aunt Sally.  While the rest of the world throws balls at sticks, we play Aunt Sally which sounded to him like throwing sticks at balls. He suggested this could help explain our lack of success at football.

Mark was also confused by the Abingdon one-way system and said he couldn’t see that a town our size needed a one-way system. He had a dig at the public school theatre we were at – grand pianos everywhere, and no signposts to the theatre from town. He also joked about the recent government advice asking people to stockpile fuel to beat the unions. Perhaps it was for the best that he did not put 2 and 2 together – that the minister who allegedly gave the advice for people to keep fuel in cans, Francis Maude, came from Abingdon School.