At 11 am today there was a showing of the 1919 Abingdon Homecoming film to a packed house at the Abbey Cinema.

The film was accompanied by a pianist and showed the huge reception local people gave to the troops returning from WWI. There followed a short documentary made by the Friends of Abingdon. The documentary will be added too and include scenes from today’s re-enactment events.

There was a re-enactment parade at noon that included some young ladies in white dresses carrying flowers.

The 2019 Mayor of Ock Street was there, leading the Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers.

The 2019 Mayor of Abingdon-on-Thames was in the parade. The 1919 Mayor and Council were shown in the film. In the documentary after the film, the 2019 Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council were compared with the older, all male, 1919 Abingdon Borough Council.

Some musicians helped lead the parade.

The rest of the Abbey Brass Band followed and gave a real woomph to the sound, as did the Morris Dancers who sang along to a couple of WWI favourites.

The event was organised by Heather Brown, and the Friends of Abingdon,

and a team of volunteers.

A short speech was made by the Mayor, and then the young ladies laid flowers at the makeshift memorial, followed by the older ladies.

A stall allowed people to sample food from the Great War Cook Book. Some of the carrot marmalade can be seen here.

As it was Heritage Open Day there were open properties to look round including Christ Hospital Hall where the archivist had put together an interesting exhibition.

1-3 Ock Street has not changed a lot externally in one hundred years. This is now the premises of a Family Law firm called BH&O LLP and it was interesting to see the sympathetic restoration inside.

I spent the afternoon at Trinity giving tours. We had our own historic film playing – Songs of Praise recorded in Trinity in 1980 and shown in 1981. The Mayor of Ock Street from 1980 was interviewed and chose the hymn – Lord of the Dance.