Thanks to Steve for the first two pictures at today’s Heritage WWI Event on the Market Place. The first shows the recruiting Sergeant filling in the papers for another young Abingdon recruit going to serve King and Country.
The second shows Mr Punch and The Kaiser having a ding dong in front of the children.
Mr Punch has lost none of his punch with these kids after 100 years.
Thanks to Peter, also from Abingdon Camera Club, for this picture of the recruitment desk and the two pictures that follow.
Some lads from Abingdon about to join up for King and Country.
who then go through some initial training, getting it wrong and get an earful.
The Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers, and Mr Hemmings Traditional Abingdon Morris Dancers, joined forces in memory of colleagues from 100 years ago.
Councillor Angela Lawrence, The Mayor of Abingdon, opened the Heritage Open Day activities at 10am, and is seen here in East St Helen Street.
Window displays showed the history of buildings, and a record of those who went to serve in WWI. There were 16 Properties opened for Heritage Open Day, and there were many windows on the past.
The Community Shop stayed open for an extra day – showing an exhibition of Abingdon people who served in WWI. All the pictures they collected will become part of the local history collection in the library. They used a 1914 way of counting Saturday’s visitors.
Finally, unless I get sent more pictures, the earlier recruits returned in modern day uniform to show they really could keep step and march in time in front of their visiting Brigadier, and MP Nicola Blackwood.
It was brilliant, great to see so many people in town and very interesting too. Loved the WWI angle on the Punch and Judy too. I thought as I watched that 100 years ago people (kids?) would have been equally entertained and enthralled.
Amazing day! Well done to all who organised this event. Once again, it is great to see the market place being so well used.
Probably the best community event ever held in the town, Hats off to Alistair and team for organising a truly magnificent event ! Thank you.
An amazing event , which attracted enormous crowds, well done Alistair
It was a great day and it was so enjoyable seeing the children participating in the activities, such as butter making and painting toy lead soldiers, which they also watched being cast.
Well done everyone.
What a fantastic day and how lovely to see the town full of people all day. Well done to all the organisers.
Yes, very well done Alistair, Jane and everyone involved in organising this event. It was amazing. So much to see and everything so well presented, and there was such a buzz all around the town.
I got talking to a couple of ladies from Witney who had come specially for the event and they told me how glad they were that they had done so.
A very enjoyable event, so well done all concerned. I particularly enjoyed the tableau of the mounted warhorses with the officer and the drummer boy.
Absolutely brilliant and so many people in the town! Vintage fair was great as well and had lots of visitors. Slightly confused by absence of retro music that was also advertised?
Well done alastair and team – very good event as always
Absolutely brilliant day. Many thanks to all of those people who worked so hard to make it happen. Great to see the town so busy and invigorated!!!!! Let us hope that the residents of Abingdon will go on to support the town centre and keep it alive and buzzing.
A fantastic day, in the Merchant’s House we had over 800 visitors. I know of at least two groups of people who had traveled to Abingdon especially for the day. What an excellent showcase for our beautiful town.
SSAFA, the charity for the day, raised a magnificent £1,089.67p. Every penny will go towards helping serving and ex-serving men, women and their families living in Abingdon and the Vale.
Thanks to everyone who contributed and to Dalton Barracks and RAF Brize Norton for the soldiers and airmen who helped collect the money.
I was in the Market Place all day and the crowds poured in to see the activities. It was great!
Matt and Jane from the museum must be thanked for organising much of the Market Place events. And Property owners who had an exhausting day. And Community groups like the cadets, comminty choir, morris dancers, town band, and all the volunteers.
…. and Backstreeter himself who has been organising Heritage Weekend in Abingdon for many years now and does an awful lot of it single-handed, especially the boring behind-the-scenes stuff which no-one else wants to do!