Since my last visit in November, progress has been made at the Radley Reach development off the Twelve Acre Drive. Dozens of new homes are now occupied.
Phase 2 is well underway, with more houses rising steadily behind the completed areas.
Several roads have now been given road signs. Among them are Russell Avenue and Spooner Court. Peter Spooner was the Mayor of Abingdon from 1987 to 1988. Could Russell Avenue be a tribute to Tony Russell, once the bagman of the Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers?
Elsewhere, the road names follow an Abingdon Abbey theme with names such as Monk Crescent, Prior Road, Monastery Gardens, Cantor Row, and Benedictine Row.
The Benedictine Row sign also points to the Sports Pavilion.
Behind the housing, the development borders open farmland, with wheat growing close to the perimeter.
Could Pat Russell be an alternative inspiration for the naming of Russell Avenue?
Were there any new GP surgeries? Infant’s schools? Shops?
Lots of red or beige boxes, tarmac, and some token shrubs and trees here and there. Yay.
And as for community amenities – who needs those when more money can be made from selling plain red boxes, says the contractors?
Meanwhile, the Oxford Rd roundabout remains a scabby and uncompleted dumping ground – “welcome to Abingdon.”
The plastic red fencing on the central reservation bit on the Dunmore Road entrance/exit is a real safety risk and has caused a heap of near misses on the roundabout because people in cars have zero visibility anymore pulling out onto the roundabout. That needs to be fixed ASAP before there’s a nasty accident.
Progress would have been they were never built.
Kris and Chris – nobody is asking you to live there. If it doesn’t appeal to your taste or fit your hudget you are free to continuing living wherever you are or elsewhere
Nothing to do with wanting to live there or money. . But it it an offending site that should never have been built. Abingdon was big enough. I like Abingdon as it is. It doesn’t need these kind of changes to “improve” anyone’s way of life apart from the developers.
My family have lived in Abingdon for generations Colin, working in the MG factory, in the tannery, in the clothes industry and before that working the fields. But you can have your opinion, sure.
What gets my back up is the paving over of farmland with cheap little red boxes built to the cheapest standards that don’t even have any facilities coming with them for the town, and roadworks on main roads that are just semi-abandoned for years and rubble and mess and hazards everywhere, also the building work causing an increase in flood risk for the rest of the residents in the town, and beautiful large mature trees being hacked down for “progress.” (And the sparse few new sapling trees they plant back in their place not even being watered for the first 3 years after planting, so some of them just die.)
Money and greed rules every decision – and humans will very harshly find out just how incredibly dumb they have been to concrete over all our farmland and wipe out insects and animals as they go, when it’s just far, far too late to do anything about it.
Humans – the most intelligent species on Earth – but also by far the dumbest…
Unfortunately if you want the slow decline that Abingdon has been experiencing over the years to stop there needs to be new homes for people to come live in, revitalise, invest and pay council tax. Currently a bit over-run with the grey hair brigade in Abingdon.
We’ll all be members of the grey hair brigade sooner or later.
But it won’t stop anything. Nothing terminal about the Abingdon I like. all these new little boxes won’t make any difference to the life on Abingdon as a town. Most will be bought by out of towners because of the proximity to railway lines and the London sprawl. Need to because they like Abingdon. We dont all these “extra houses” Oxford is just a field away likewise Didcot that has just got so big you can’t get around on foot anymore from any of the new estates.
Fields and countryside are always preferable to the sprawl that councillors, governments and developers what to impose on those that live here already, irrelevant of the kind of people they import to these dumps.
So you’re happy we are having all this rubbish dumped at out doorsteps then i take it? What about the fields to feed all these extra people? where do they come from if you keep concreting over them? How bout the sewerage, road, Drs schools. Youve a very short sighted attitude that will make all out lives much worse.
Well they’ve been approved, are in the the process of being built and more have been approved beside ALDI so if it’s a bad as you say I guess you better move away rather than standing at the roadside shouting at the big red cubes.
It’s not the 1940’s anymore so your reference to “out of towners” shows how narrow your world view is. Not everyone settles down beside their parents – they do travel for new career opportunities! Even if you want the “from towners” to buy and live here they can’t as there are no new houses for them without these developments. The only alternative is to wait for the grey haired brigade to pass on but they leave behind dingy 1960/1970s houses which are over priced and require additional cost to renovate and modernise
Yes unfortunately But it doesn’t make your assumptions right. Just because something has been approved and is being built doesn’t automatically make it a good idea — especially in a town like Abingdon, which is already struggling under the weight of poor infrastructure, growing traffic congestion, and a lack of joined-up planning.
This isn’t about nostalgia or resisting change for the sake of it. It’s about questioning how much more this area can realistically absorb without making life worse for the people who already live here. Abingdon now finds itself with the worst of all worlds: a town that’s lost its distinct character, with endless new builds squeezed into every corner — but without the necessary investment in roads, public transport, healthcare, or services to support them.
Labelling legitimate concerns as backward or outdated misses the point entirely. Wanting to protect the livability of a community isn’t narrow-minded — it’s responsible. And dismissing long-time residents as “the grey-haired brigade” says more about your attitude than it does about theirs.
Growth for the sake of growth isn’t progress — it’s just sprawl. And people have every right to speak up when they see their home being turned into something unrecognisable.
The “grey haired brigade” as you call us run many of the community and voluntary activities in the town, because younger people are busy with work and family. If Abingdon is to be the sort of community you seem to want, then we all have something to contribute, and making insulting remarks about one section of the populace, as intimated in your posts, is not helpful or community-minded.