Somebody has thrown their ‘Chronicle of the 20th Century‘ into the skip at the top of East St Helen Street, but today’s post looks back at the 20th Century. (Adverts taken from the Abingdon Herald from May 1978 with thanks. All Rights Reserved.)

In 1968 the Abingdon Congregational Church came to share worship in the same building as Trinity Methodist Church. They maintained their separate organisations for the next ten years then in 1978 a sharing agreements were signed and the two congregations united at Trinity Church. So this Sunday (on Trinity Sunday), Trinity are celebrating 40 years together.

I went to look in the library to see if this got mentioned in the May 1978 Abingdon Heralds (on microfilm). I could not find anything about that, but there was a story about the Abingdon Congregational Church building (now the Ask Restaurant). The headline was ‘Rival Plans for Old Church – Skateboards or Art and Crafts?‘ The VWHDC (Vale White Horse District Council) were to decide between competing schemes for the old church, either to become a centre for traditional crafts, or a specialist skateboard centre. I don’t think either happened.

Also of interest was the headline ‘One Way to Car Chaos‘. East and West St Helen Street, and St Helen’s Wharf bridge had just become One Way. This scheme had been months in the planning, but motorists, who lived in the new housing estates in South Abingdon, did not seem to know, and lots of them tried to go down East St Helen Street where a temporary barrier stopped them going home that way. The editorial said that it was like a return to the bad old days of Abingdon traffic chaos.