In The Meadows at Abbey Fields, the David Wilson Homes development, several of the roads are named after businesses with long associations with Abingdon. A new one to me is Holmes Mews.

Percy Holmes was Mayor of Abingdon in 1953 and belonged to a family long associated with the town through P. Holmes & Son, bakers with shops in Ock Street and Bath Street.

Nearby in The Meadows is a new children’s play area. When I visited last summer it was still behind fencing. It has now opened.

On the neighbouring Abbey Fields estate, a Barratt Homes development, are a couple of other road names that seem to be fairly new. One of these is Crane Avenue. Rhoda Crane, known as Sue, served as a town councillor from 1987 to 1995 and was Mayor of Abingdon in 1993–94. She took a particular interest in town twinning.

Another is Pickering Close. Dorothea Pickering was an educator and spiritual pioneer in Abingdon. She bought a house in East St Helen Street and moved her preparatory school there from The Vineyard, where it continued until 1967. In the 1970s she re-imagined the house as a spiritual centre, naming it St Ethelwold’s after the Abbot of Abingdon Abbey.