Spring Road Cemetery – 5 memorials

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In Spring Road Cemetery (also sometimes known as the Old Cemetery) are the memorials of a number of interesting people and I thought I’d start an occasional series to point some of them out. If anybody has any more details or corrections I would be interested to get my facts right.
Spring Road Cemetery
Arthur Preston, historian, Abingdon Mayor and Freeman has a headstone near the lower chapel of rest.
Spring Road Cemetery
One of the largest stones has been erected for John Creemer Clarke, Member of Parliament, clothing manufacturer, and the benefactor who helped fund the building of Trinity church and the cottage hospital.
Spring Road Cemetery
At the top end of the cemetery is a memorial to J E Steven of the Royal Navy Air Service who died in 1917 during WWI.
Spring Road Cemetery
Not far away, two other persons buried in the cemetery during World War I were from China. I am told they were part of a labour camp at Milton. For many years their graves were surrounded by iron railings since it was the custom to leave money scattered on Chinese graves. Their names : Ar Fook and Muk Sheung.

Abingdon at 11 am on Armistice Day

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When I searched Ebay for Abingdon I found mostly postcards for sale – including three featuring the war memorial in days gone by.
War Memorial
At 11 O’clock this morning about 40 people stood in silence round the war memorial to mark Armistice Day. The town crier rang his bell to announce the two minute silence.
War Memorial
The town clerk, Mayor and Chair of the Vale were there, behind them were town councillors.
War Memorial
There were also two young ladies selling poppies, where the green shop front once was. Near them were some veterans with medals. And round about were people – some who had deliberately come and others who had paused in passing as a mark of respect.

Sporadic traffic continued to flow as the people stood in silence until the town crier rang his bell again. Somebody then broke the silence to complain that it was a total disgrace that the traffic had shown no respect.

Launch of Trinity Learning News

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Interviewing the mayor
Reporters interviewing the Mayor of Abingdon aren’t usually treated to juice and biscuits, but then the six young people who visited Duncan Brown weren’t usual reporters. They were pupils from Carswell Community Primary School, there to launch Abingdon’s new Heritage Lottery funded project Trinity Learning News.

The children took notes as the mayor fielded questions that ranged from his educational background to the work of his charities and his future hopes for Abingdon. The children’s reports will appear in their very own newsletter to be distributed free to care homes and day-centres in Abingdon.
Interviewing the mayor
From content to format and distribution, the group will make all the decisions and do all the work – in just six two-hour sessions. Besides putting classroom skills into practice, they’ll be learning about team-work, responsibility and working to deadlines.

When their time with the project finishes, a new group of youngsters from another Abingdon primary school will take their place. (Thanks to Rosemary from the Trinity Church Learning project for this report).

Who should open Poundland Abingdon?

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Poundland
The lights are on where Woolworths once was. Poundland Abingdon will be opening on Thursday 18th November 2010. The official opening will be two days later on Saturday 20th November when a mystery celebrity will cut the ribbon at 10am.

At the same time Poundland Glasgow, Holyhead and Chesterfield also have offical openings with a different mystery celebrity. That makes 4 Poundland opening on Saturday week, and 2 this coming Saturday where the mystery celebrities have just been revealed… Tracey Barlow from Coronation Street is opening Camberley, and Kirk Sutherland from Coronation Street is opening Droylsden.

Who would you like to see opening the new Poundland in Abingdon?