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.
No solar panels in view. Was ground thermal heating installed?
The architecture is minimal. DW Homes need to look at Peter Barber Associates to learn how to build economically, sustainably and with a sense of built community. I have no link to PBA, but they are extremely well-known in the world of community architecture.
@ppjs if you have a problem you will have had opportunities to make your views known during the planning stages
pickering close will probably make most people think of the legendary ronnie
Dorothea Pickering moved from The Vineyard to Park Road (I was there in the 1950s) then to East St Helens Street.
In the 1960s Holmes the bakers also had a shop in Reynolds Way (which had only recently been built and looked very smart back then).
Miss Pickering was a regular worshipper at the Catholic church on the corner of Radley Road (Our Lady and St Edmund of Abingdon).