Going round the open gardens in East St Helen Street today I discovered new views on familiar places …
St Helen’s Church.
The River Thames
The Old Gaol.
The Old Gaol development again. Looks like the underground carpark is in place.
(The Abingdon Diary shows there are Open Gardens this weekend, and one act plays next week.)
It is 9pm on a warm Friday evening.
It feels almost Mediterranian at the far end of Bath Street where Cafe Zeko now serve Tapas on Friday and Saturday evenings. People are seated outside. A couple of ladies are looking at Marie’s colourful window display. Over the road Bella Napolli are serving meals.
People also sit outside at Ask, half hidden by the olive trees.
Not far away is the Ock Street Taxi rank … Taxis either queue there or are parked along up by the Market Place waiting to get out onto High Street. There is a whole different Abingdon the taxi drivers know. And one of them, called Dave, writes very realistically about it on the The AbingdonTaxi twitter stream. What I cannot work out is that he is often 3 or 4 hours ahead of me so it could be he is tweeting from another Abingdon in a parallel universe.
The Tattoo shop has moved from its old site at 123 Ock Street.
and moved into what was the letting office of a well known Abingdon estate agent – empty for a while at 5 High Street.
Next door at 7-9 High Street, the 9TP / pound shop+ are closing down now their lease is up.
There is a planning application to change the use of that large fronted premises from retail to finance and professional Services. The property owner say they are finding it difficult to find a retailer in that location and they don’t want to have an empty property.
The Ox pub sign has gone from its traditional place on the Oxford Road. There were once 60 pubs in Abingdon for a population of 5,000. There are now 17 for a population of 33,000.
Black Swan
Blue Boar
Boundary House
Brewery Tap
Broad Face
College Oak
Cross Keys
Grapes
Kings Head & Bell
Midget
Old Anchor Inn
Plough
Punchbowl
Saxton Arms
Spread Eagle
Stocks Bar
White Horse
The times they are a changing.