The Free Library building has been hidden behind scaffolding for quite some time. Now the covers are off, revealing the mix of Victorian and Mock Tudor architecture. Features include large bay windows, steep gables, and a grand stone doorway. Above it, the plaque reads ‘FREE LIBRARY’ It opened in 1895.
At street level, the right-hand side is Crumbs Sandwich Bar – in bright orange. On the left, a sweet and vape shop briefly occupied the space last summer — still under scaffolding at the time. Now, a new barbershop has taken its place.
On the other side of Crumbs is Efes, Abingdon’s first Turkish barbershop. (Crumbs is now in the middle of a barbershop sandwich.)
Efes has also had a quick update in the last week and now features foldaway doors and a newly laid floor. ‘Efes’ refers to the ancient city of Ephesus known from the bible. It is also a popular Turkish beer named after the ancient city.
Now that the building is refurbished, what are the plans for its use?
I wish I could have experienced the free library when it was functioning as that, when I originally came here in the mid 70’s the present library had just come into being and this one I believe stood empty for many years before being converted into flats.
In just about every retail centre the original faciae of street buildings has been spoiled by retailers moving in who have defaced the ground floor with ‘shouty’, philistine shopfronts to the point that they are now trying to out-compete each other for our attention in their awfulness.
Walk through any older, established retail area … the Cornmarket in Oxford, Regent Street in London. but, unfortunately, just about anywhere … and look at the first floor and above at what remains of the intended charm and craftsmanship of the original buildings and compare it with the colour blind, hodgepodge of the ground floor ‘retail units’.
Abingdon still has that hideous neon ‘sculpture’ on the riverside of the Old Gaol (now Torremolinos on-Thames) to advertise how many barbers we have …
I remember using the old library as a child. It had character. I also remember using the building when it was the Jobcentre before that moved to Stert Street.
The architect was J G T West https://www.abingdon.gov.uk/abingdon_people/john-george-timothy-west
and the ‘foundation stone’ (in fact the keystone of the first floor doorway to the balcony) was laid by Lord Wantage in June 1895 (Jackson’s Oxford Journal 22 June 1895 p. 8. He had to do this from a temporary platform and made only a short speech as he felt the whole thing to be rather unsafe. The stone bears the initials CH for Christ’s Hospital, who paid for it. The shops were part of the original design.