Broad Street in Abingdon could never have matched Broad Street in Oxford for historical interest. After all there were no martyrs burnt at the stake in Abingdon. Nor could it ever have matched the breadth of the Oxford name-sake. But looking at my 1910 OS map, it did once look like a broad street with the road as the backbone and houses either side.

The building of the precinct across it and the Carpark on one side, means that only a few buildings now remain in a row with no real coherance or backbone…

The first two buildings are really on Stert Street but they are on the corner with Broad Street. On one corner of Stert Street is the Knowl. It houses the 2care community.

On the opposite corner is the Al Zaib, Indian Restaurant. It was the Bee Hive pub until a few years ago.

The building on the junction of Broad Street and Queen Street, the one with the fancy victorian brickwork, houses Wenn Townsend, Chartered Accountants, who also have an Office in Oxford. This building was a pub in victorian times and known as the Steam Plough.

In between Al Zaib (Bee Hive) and Wenn Townsend (Steam Plough) is Philip Rowe’s Chiropractic Clinic. On the blue door is a picture of a backbone, and the name of Philip’s four fellow practioners.

But I suspect even they could not put Broad Street’s back together again.