Abingdon Garth

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Abingdon Garth
While going up Noddle Hill Way in the city of Hull, over the weekend, I was pleased to see a small residential road with the name Abingdon Garth.
Abingdon Garth
In Yorkshire dialect I believe that a garth is a small grass enclosure adjacent to a house. The Abingdon Garth has a fenced grass area near the houses.

The Garths make up an area in the large Bransholme housing estate to the north of Hull. They start with Abingdon Garth, and end with Zeals Garth. There are 25 garths in all, only one starting with X is missing.

I could not find the connection with Abingdon in Oxfordshire but somebody may know.

Murk – An Abingdon Rag Magazine – 1962, 1964 and 1965

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Many thanks to Graham for a follow up to his article, “The Pit”, that generated so much interest. This time he sends something quite different – extracts from an Abingdon Rag Mag called Murk.
Rag Magazine
The first edition is from 1962 where the writers predict what The Rag Procession in 1968 will look like.
Rag Magazine
The third edition of Murk is from 1964.
Rag Magazine
The fourth edition is from 1965. Graham says a lot of the jokes would create offence in this politically correct era. Here are a few carefully selected …
Rag Magazine
Also of interest are the adverts …
Rag Magazine
I assume the Rag Mags are from the newly formed Abingdon College, but Culham College was still going strong in the 1960s so I could be wrong.

1936 Annual from Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, becomes World News

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1936 Annual
Last week, one news story from Abingdon got promulgated around the world. It concerned the 1936 Annual from Our Lady’s School in Abingdon. A clue found by an American scholar led to a search in the school archives for THE “ANNUAL”, where two forgotten poems by J.R.R Tolkein were discovered.
1936 Annual
The poems included the Shadow Man and a festive poem ‘Noel’. Tolkein, a Roman Catholic, was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, when he formed the friendship with the Abingdon school.

A school exhibition is planned where the poems will be displayed alongside other interesting artifacts.

Belsky – The Lesson

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Belsky
Night and Day, the sculpture of Mother and Child can be seen near the library in Abingdon.
Belsky
It is at the intersection of Broad Street and Bury Street.

While walking in Sutton Courtney, a few years ago, I noticed the same familiar Mother and Child sculpture, surrounded by trees, and discovered that is where Franta Belsky, the Czech born sculptor, once had his studio.

Entitled The Lesson, the sculpture in Abingdon bears the inscription ‘In memory of Margaret Belsky‘ . She was a well known newspaper cartoonist in the 1960s, and the wife of the sculptor. The Lesson was one of her favourite works.

It was presented to Abingdon by Franta Belsky, in 1989, the year of his wife’s death, and is the second bronze casting.

The first was unveiled in 1959 in Bethnal Green, London. I presume the verdigris one in Sutton Courtney is a prototype. Franta Belsky died in Abingdon Hospital in July 2000.

(Thanks to an Abingdon Herald article on 21 Sept 1989 called “Sculptor’s memory in Bronze” for some of the original information, and a previous blog post here. It is well worth revisiting.)