For over a year, the corner building on West St Helen Street has been supported by scaffolding and surrounded by sandbags after its side wall became unstable. This September, the old unsafe wall was finally demolished.
This October, work began to rebuild it. A new structure is taking shape — breeze blocks for the inside wall and a brick frontage to match the rest of the building.
It’s good to see such steady progress after such a long wait. Over the years, quite a few long-standing issues in central Abingdon, highlighted here and elsewhere, have now been tackled. One exception is the Upper Reaches Hotel.
The useless multi-story car park problem has not been solved. I was told that it would be too costly to fix. It has been left as a monument to the run down areas in Abingdon. The Upper Reaches Hotel is not going to be solved. I have been told that the owners are holding out so that they can get planning permission to bulldoze it down and build expensive flats. In my opinion there is a wasted opportunity to replace the rotted monk on the Tesco roundabout with a nice display or something similar.
The whole town is an absolute disgrace..it breaks my heart!
Why are you so negative?
Where does the leasholder of the Upper Reaches live?
Perhaps a delegation from Abingdon should go there and cause a bit of a nuisance on his doorstep, see how he and his neighbours like it?
Let’s hope that Pappy’s Afro Caribbean Takeaway is back soon. They just seemed to be building up momentum when their buiding was found to be dangerous.
Can you tell us, The Lady, why you think the whole town is a disgrace?
It is a disgrace. Can you not see the wood for the trees?
“Welcome to Abingdon”, the first thing anyone sees is the rotten wooden Monk that has been laid on its side for god knows how long. Followed by the entire downtown area which is just charity shops, coffee shops and so called barbers. Born and bred in Abingdon. Escaped 25 years ago. Used to think I would come back and retire in Abingdon but that is about as likely as a lottery win.
The monk was tidied up ages ago, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. The precinct is not small business friendly. The big unit opposite Poundland should be subdivided into small units like Coxeter House used to be. Any attempt to bring big ‘destination ‘ retailers into Abingdon centre will fail. They want to be in Oxford or Didcot, failing that at Fairacres. Thats just the economics of retailing.
Other towns have made a success of attracting small businesses to their centre (Stroud, Frome, Abergavenny) why can’t we?
Was last in Abingdon 2 months ago. The monk was definitely acting like he had consumed too many “ole speckled hens.” Resting horizontally on the floor. So if that’s your definition of being tidied up I would hate to visit your house. Again, this is the first thing visitors see. It is a total embarrassment. I am old enough to remember when Didcot was shite. Now it is a considerably more desirable location. 50 years of bad local governance in Abingdon is coming home to roost. Lets just wait for the RAF/barracks camp to become used for other things in the next year or two. That will be the final nail.