At Abingdon Rugby Club yesterday the clubhouse was full of interesting stalls helping to raise money for Thames Valley Air Ambulance and the Alzheimer’s Society.
There were lots of prizes on the raffle, including a short holiday and a Miele Vacuum.
Over £800 will be split between the charities, and Tara won the guess the weight of cake.
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.
Autumn term begins on 3rd September for a lot of Oxfordshire’s schools. Prices in Abingdon have useful stationary.
Parents can consult with each other and internet sites, like mums.net, about how to prepare for the first week at school. Mumsnet.com have a lot of tips about starting school.
Thankyou to the Abingdon NCS group A for this.
We are a group of young people who for our NCS programme are holding several events this week. On Monday we will be doing a sponsored dog walk, on Tuesday a collection for Abingdon Emergency Food bank on the market place from 10:00-15:00 and on Wednesday a family fun day at Fitzharrys school from 10:30-14:30. The food bank collection will only be for food donations so we would appreciate if people brought long life food donations.
Their Abingdon NCS group A has an instagram page with pictures of activities https://www.instagram.com/abingdona_program4/
(NCS is a voluntary personal and social development programme for 15–17 year olds)