According to The Virtual London website … “Opposite ‘The Houses of Parliament’ … is a green and grassy area where news crews conduct interviews with politicians. This is known variously as ‘Abingdon Green’, ‘College Green’ and ‘St Stephen’s Green’. The official line though, from the Head of Public Information at the Palace of Westminster, is that it’s just called ‘The Green’
The name for Abingdon Green may be officially ‘The Green’, but the street alongside is Abingdon Street.
The Earl of Abingdon once owned a residence on this site around 1700. He was well thought of and so the name Abingdon was used when the road was widened – and his old house demolished – in 1750.
The BBC regularly use this spot for pieces to camera and refer to it as Abingdon Green (at least they do within the Corporation). I’m fairly sure that is its official name. One assumes that this is because the Abbey in Abingdon was the twin of Westminster Abbey. I’m guessing this is also why you have Abingdon St and those roads and pubs in Kensington which refer to Abingdon….back in the day, they were probably stops along the way
OK, so are they going to have to change the name to Abingdon-on-Thames street? And, for that matter, are the history books going to be changed to refer to the Earl of Abingdon-on-Thames?
The other Abingdon-on-Thames connection to Westminster is that our mace is the twin of the mace they use in parliament. I am told we had ours first and they liked it so created a copy. Aparently outs is occasionally borrowed when the westminster one is being repaired atc.
Better keep our Mace away from Micheal Hesseltine then, or it will likely need repairing!!!!
Regarding Number 2 above, no of course not: there are plenty of examples of extant titles in the British peerages which bear an old fashioned style place name.
If your work takes you to New York there are links there too. See http://tinyurl.com/6535y3l or Google Abingdon Square , NY.
I walked past here yesterday. The area is currently fenced off for improvement works, presumably Olympic related, but there is a sign up on the fencing that says the area is called Abingdon Park Gardens, also known as College Green.