The Heritage Weekend road closure signs have arrived. The diversion is down East St Helen Street and up West St Helen Street. While taking this picture I noticed there is a double yellow line one side,
and a triple yellow line the other. I checked the Highway Code but could not find triple yellow lines.
The year is 1416. Geoffrey Barbour invests a considerable sum in building a stone bridge from Abingdon towards London, and local businessmen seeing the benefits joined in funding the project.
At lunchtime in St Nicolas Church, the town archivist, Jackie Smith, gave a fascinating talk on the 600 year history of Abingdon Bridge. How it was breached in the civil war, and badly damaged by severe winters, but then repaired and improved again and again.
The final slide of the talk showed Abingdon’s Freemen driving sheep across Abingdon Bridge in the year 2000. Mr Michael Matthews on the right is the longest serving Freeman, and possibly the last remaining Mayor of the Borough of Abingdon.
The talk was the first event in the 4 day heritage open days. There are medieval happenings in town on Saturday to celebrate the bridge and Abingdon Bridge beer will be on tap.
There will also be 14 heritage properties open including the former County Police Station, now the home of The Abingdon Bridge Charity (TAB) who help and give counselling to young people. They are recognising the 600th anniversary of our town’s other bridge by encouraging friends and visitors to match the age of the bridge with 600 £1 coins as a special heritage donation to help them with their work.
Another of the properties, Christ’s Hospital Hall, will have an exhibition about 600 years of Abingdon Bridge. See the map for the full list of open properties.
The shop that was Hathaways for many years, and has been a number of things since, will next become Abingdon’s fourth Traditional Turkish Barber.
Meanwhile the first restaurant to open in the Old Gaol will be a Costa Coffee shop, run by the same people who run Costa on Bury Street.
Same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same.
You might be suprised to learn that there are still monks living in England today. You will just not find any at Abingdon Abbey which was demolished following Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
A 21st Century monk will be visiting Abingdon and giving a talk at 7:30pm on Friday at St Nicolas Church as part of our medieval-themed Heritage Weekend. He will talk about how the Benedictine monks of Abingdon Abbey would have lived and how their successors live today.
Saint Benedict wrote that a monk should prefer nothing to the work of God. The monastic day is therefore built around set times of prayer. The day begins with the rising bell when the monks gather in the church for the first prayers of the day, Matins. This is followed by a period of quiet prayer before Lauds (Morning Prayer). and then breakfast. Mass is celebrated before a morning of work followed by Midday Prayer and then lunch. More work in the afternoon is followed by the celebration of Vespers. There follows a time for spiritual reading then supper. Compline, or Night Prayer is followed by silence and sleep.