Roysse’s Gateway, the historic entrance to The Old Abingdon Grammar School, has undergone conservation work in recent weeks.
Building conservationists have made repairs, and undertaken preservation work to prevent further decay and given the Roysse Arms a new coat of paint. The gateway used to lead into the school yard and was the gift of the Earl of Abingdon in 1811. The gateway is now permanently closed since the yard is now a public garden.
John Roysse, at the age of sixty-three, established the school in the year 1563, providing education for sixty-three boys. John Roysse left substantial funds to ensure the school’s enduring legacy. Today, the school is thriving on a larger site. It educates a significantly larger number of boys, and will soon welcome girls. See Abingdon School to welcome girls for the first time
Looks fantastic! Well done town council.
Today – 3 August – is St Ethelwold’ Day
Ethelwold (or Æthelwold) ranks as one of the great figures of 10th-century monastic reform. Born in Winchester sometime between 904 and 909, he spent his youth at the court of King Athelstan. He became Prior of Glastonbury and in 955 received from King Ædred the Abbey of Abingdon which he re-established. On 29 November 963 he was ordained Bishop of Winchester by St Dunstan. There he installed monks in the cathedral, and restored the two Winchester foundations of the New Minster and Nunnaminster. He also restored the monasteries at Milton (Dorset) and Chertsey, and made new foundations at Ely, Peterborough and Thorney (East Anglia), in the course of which he made himself unpopular with secular clergy who were turned out of monasteries to make way for genuine monks.
He was a renowned scholar, compiling the Regularis Concordia and translating the Rule of Benedict into Old English. He used some of the wealth he accumulated to build new churches and was a great patron of ecclesiastical art. He died on 1 August 984 at Beddington in Surrey, and was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester. After a miraculous cure attributed to him some twelve years later, his body was moved from the crypt to the choir and he was recognized as a saint, though never formally canonized.