The Ock Street exhibition at the Trinity Church Hall is here at last. The exhibition poster is tied alongside the Make Poverty History banner.

At the exhibition, I first listened to a recorded interview telling of harder times in Ock Street. The bread man would often be owed money by people. But still he could not let them go without bread. Poverty like that has been made history in Ock Street.

This lady is Ock Street born, and bred. She stands in front of a board saying Ock Street 1910. That was 8 years before she was born. She lived at 232 Ock Street.

Back in the early 1900s about a third of the population of Abingdon lived around Ock Street, until the slum clearances of the 1930s.

The exhibiton has been magnificently collated and staged by Abingdon Area Archaeological and Historical Society (Aaahs). They were pleasantly suprised at how popular it has been. There have been over 250 people on the first day. For anybody who wants, there are folders and computers and CDs to trawl through.

This exhibiton board is called Nonconformist Chapels. Ock Street used to have lots of chapels, pubs, shops, minor industries, and of course dwellings. But now it looks more like this old linked post.

On the way home, I dropped in at the newest shop on Ock Street. Its been there about two months and is called the Traditional Afro-Caribbean & Continental shop. There were two young ladies serving at the counter. One was braiding the others hair. (This is the premises recently vacated by The Movies .) I bought a bottle of Mega Malt (a non alcoholic malt drink) from their fridge. Not bad!