Advance warning signs have appeared round the town centre over the last 24 hours. The top of East St. Helen Street will be CLOSED for two weeks in the middle of August.
The spelling looks perfect to me – apart from the spelling of Lombard Street.
At 14:30 on Sunday 31 July there is a guided tour of Abingdon’s Mediaeval Abbey by the Friends of Abingdon. To book a place email: pb@paulineburren.co.uk or phone 01235 521873. It will include a walk round various grounds and buildings including the outline of the Abbey Church …
… charted using underground scanning techniques by the Lost Abbey Project.
Today there were a group of people learning Nordic walking round the outline.
And there was me, with my more erratic walking, filming the outline of the Abbey Church, and the Abbey Gateway…
Over Heritage Weekend there will be the launch of the Lost Abbey information trail. More of that soon.
A new pathway is being laid under the archway at Twickenham House …
to the Old Gaol the other side – for this is now all part of one complex.
Girders and steel ties lay ready to be used as the skeleton for new buildings.
Older buildings are being merely refurbished.
It will be interesting to see how the barred windows look when people live up there as luxury dwellers – not prisoners.
You can tell from the thickness of the walls that St Ethelwold’s House is one of the oldest houses in Abingdon. The house has a Georgian front, with medieaval rooms stretching behind.
There has been a lot going on at St Ethelwold’s House this weekend. Yesterday there was an open afternoon.
I read in a leaflet called “The Fellowship of St Ethelwold” that Dorothea Pickering – the founder – hoped to create a small scale Benedictine Community at St Ethelwolds. Dorothea was interested in the history of Abingdon Abbey and named the house after St Ethelwold – a Benedictine monk who rebuilt and reinvigorated the Abbey in the tenth century. Nowadays, Bed and Breakfast, and the use of rooms for spiritual and community activities, ensure that St Ethelwold’s continues to flourish.
Another of Dorotheas interests was interfaith relationships and today – Sunday – there was a large interfaith gathering in the garden. People shared a picnic and were entertained first by a group of children singing and dancing…
Then with some Bangladeshi music …
That reminds me, Duncan Brown, the ex Mayor, invited followers of a number of different faiths to act as his Chaplain during the year he was Mayor.