Abingdon People – Abingdon on Thames Town Council

W. Ackling & Sons in the 1920s at what is now (2015) 44 Bath Street, Abingdon, Oxfordshire

The Ackling Family

Our grandfather, William Ackling, was well known in Abingdon from the 1890s to the 1940s as the proprietor of the ironmonger’s shop in Bath Street. He was a highly skilled metalworker and he and his sons contributed greatly to the everyday needs of the people of Abingdon.

The earliest local reference to the Ackling family is in the year 1747 when Daniel Ackling married Sarah Archer in St. Helen’s church, and five more Daniel Acklings are listed in the church records between that date and 1831.

William was born in 1864 to John and Elizabeth Ackling and was the eldest child of eight. When he was sixteen it is recorded in the 1881 census that he was a Tin Man Apprentice (known today as a Metal Worker). He went on to become exceptionally gifted in metal, brass and copper and in the early 1890s opened an ironmongers shop at No. 32 Bath Street – this number was changed in later years and is now No. 44.

William married Agnes Curtis from Beedon in about 1890 and they had four sons: Percy, Harry, Stan and Archie and one daughter, Agnes – inevitably called Sis. He was very forward thinking for those days and made sure that each son was trained in a different trade (building, carpentry, metal working and plumbing) so that they could combine their knowledge and form a profitable business. Their sister became an accomplished seamstress. Sadly, the First World War came along and the three eldest sons were old enough to be enlisted. Fortunately, they all returned safely.

The shop was double fronted with large windows where they displayed all manner of lamps – brass, oil and later electric – also coal scuttles, fire screens and a variety of kitchen accessories of the day – many handmade. Inside was a small counter with many drawers and shelves behind, and early on there was a metal barrel filled with paraffin as that was the age of candles and oil lamps − no Health and Safety regulations in those days.

William Ackling advertised regularly in Hooke’s Abingdon Almanack and Directory. The typical advert above dates from 1907 and shows his wide range of skills.

With thanks to Abingdon Library William Ackling was also appointed by the Borough Council as the contractor for the engines and pumps used to supply the town with water. These were situated both at the waterworks in Wootton and in the basement of the County Hall.

This entry in the ledger of the engine-building firm of Crossley Brothers Ltd shows that they sent William Ackling a K‑type gas engine on 15 August 1902. It was the first engine to be used in the basement of the County Hall.
(Courtesy of the Anson Engine Museum)

The family’s living quarters were behind the shop and upstairs, and then in the yard at the back was a workshop where they made their wares. We as children were allowed to pump the bellows so that the forge could attain the high temperatures needed for such work. Other articles they made were wrought iron gates and railings, weather-vanes of foxes, horses, hounds and many other designs, and even public house signs. Two of those signs we remember well and were both made by our grandfather: one was for The Fish public house in Sutton Courtenay – he made a fish about three feet long with each scale individually cut to size, a true work of art – and the other was of a cockerel sitting in a tree for The Cock and Tree public house in Ock Street. No doubt there are others around which we do not know about.

However, there is one piece of work still visible today, and that is the copper cockerel weather-vane on top of St. Peter’s Church tower in Drayton. This was made in memory of a young man called Henderson who was killed in the First World War. His parents commissioned it in 1929, and some years ago it was re-gilded by Geoffrey von Hoven and it just looks glorious when the sun shines upon it. You can see Daria holding it in the photograph before it was replaced.

Daria Stimpson, one of William Ackling’s granddaughters, holding the re-gilded weather vane of St Peter’s Church in Drayton in 1998.
(Courtesy of the authors)

Apart from the originality and artistic talents the family was also musical: William played the cello in the local orchestra and Percy the violin. Harry was a choir boy in St. Helen’s Church and sang in the school chapel at the opening of Saint Helen’s school in 1903.

Stan and Archie were both members of the Abingdon Volunteer Fire Brigade, and Archie continued into the National Fire Service attending many of the blitz fires during the Second World War. He invented a number of garden implements and had a large part to play in the invention of the Allen Grass Cutter.

It is a quirk of fate that these four boys produced four daughters and the daughter, Agnes, produced two boys. Consequently this branch of the Ackling family will be unable to carry on the name.

The shop closed in the late 1940s after nearly fifty years of trading and contributing to the life of Bath Street.

Daphne Ackling Daria Stimpson (née Ackling) Jill Mitchell (née Ackling)

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

John Alder – ‘the lucky cooper’

On the front of No 39 Stert Street – Mason the draper’s – there is a blue plaque commemorating the achievement of one John Alder.

He was a cooper by trade (someone who makes barrels) and he also ran The Mitre public house on this site, for which he paid rent to John Green who held the lease from Abingdon Corporation (at a cost of 10s per annum). The Mitre was possibly so-called because of the nearness of the Abbey, whose wall abutted the backyard of the inn.

In the autumn of 1767 his wife, who seems to have managed the accounts of the business, gave him £22 to pay the brewer’s bill. Unknown to her, he kept £12 of this money and bought a ticket for the State Lottery for £12 18s 6d. This was the equivalent of over £1900 in today’s money (Bank of England on-line inflation calculator). National lotteries were used to raise money for specific causes – such as a new bridge – and had flourished since at least the sixteenth century.

One night in mid-November a messenger arrived at The Mitre in a state of great excitement. John Alder was in bed and the messenger had to call up to him at the bedroom window. Alder was told that he had won first prize in the lottery – a sum of £20,000, which is worth nearly £3m today. Not surprisingly he thought this was a practical joke. Nevertheless he and his wife came downstairs and had a drink with the messenger. He was finally convinced that he had won this enormous amount of money and was sufficiently overcome to disappear into the backyard on his own for a while to recover from the shock before calling in all his neighbours for a celebration.

A few days later he and the Town Clerk, John Bowles, set off for London to collect the money. He had already begun to display the generosity for which he became famous. He distributed drinks free to all his customers, neighbours and family, and called for a mop to wipe the slate in the bar clear of their debts. The messenger had been accompanied by James Powell, the landlord of The Crown and Thistle inn where the winning ticket had been bought and registered, so Alder gave Mr Powell the use of half the money he had won ‘without interest’. The messenger himself and the two schoolboys who drew the winning ticket also benefited. The church bells rang out in celebration and the ringers were given a drink and a guinea each; Alder subsequently furnished St Nicolas’ Church with new chimes for its clock.

The poor of Abingdon were at this time suffering from bitter weather and high food prices, so from his winnings Alder gave them bread and meat (two ‘fat oxen’) and supplied clothes for all who needed them. To crown it all he bought a new body for the Abingdon Machine, the stagecoach belonging to Francis Blewitt which had brought him the news. On the door of the coach he ordered to be painted the Coopers’ Arms and the number of the winning ticket – 3379.

Mrs Alder, however, was disgruntled. Not only had her husband spent on the lottery money which was owed to the brewer, he would – she was sure – give away on top of what he had won everything that they had, bringing to pass the bankruptcy with which they had previously been threatened.

But this did not happen. Alder’s luck held when his horse won the most important prize at the Abingdon races. He became a burgess of the town and a churchwarden. A Christ’s Hospital lease of 1768 shows that he was also the tenant of four parcels of land within the old Abbey.

He died in 1780 when he was over sixty, leaving behind his son William (also a cooper) and a grandchild. In due course William became a governor of Christ’s Hospital and three times mayor of Abingdon. Among John Alder’s descendants was Dr William Alder Strange, a headmaster of Roysse’s School (now Abingdon School) in the nineteenth century.

© AAAHS and contributors 2015

A Bishop, believed to be Aethelwold, giving a blessing

St Aethelwold

Aethelwold, Abbot of Abingdon from 954 to 963 and thereafter Bishop of Winchester, was one of the three men who brought England into the movement for monastic reform that had started in continental Europe earlier in the century. The others were Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury and later Archbishop of Canterbury, and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York.

Aethelwold’s career started at Glastonbury which, under Dunstan, was the first of the English monasteries to be reformed according to the rule of St Benedict. His transfer to Abingdon was the first extension of the movement outside Glastonbury, and Abingdon Abbey was to prove a prototype of what could be achieved. Like most of the earlier foundations, it had declined into an impoverished group of priests who neither followed monastic rules nor practised community of goods, and might be married. Aethelwold replaced them with monks of his own choice. He ruthlessly reclaimed estates that had been alienated, caring little for the rights of their current owners, and raised further endowments from the king and the royal family. The abbey was transformed into a place of splendour, with buildings in the latest continental style, liturgical equipment rich in silver and gold, elaborate ceremonial, and the production of music, poetry, and illuminated manuscripts. The future king, Edgar, was educated there.

It was Edgar who became Aethelwold’s principal patron. In 963, he moved Aethelwold to Winchester, where the Old and New Minsters were reformed in the same way but on a larger scale. It was an innovation that cathedrals and monasteries were to be unified and staffed entirely by monks; among the reformers, it was Aethelwold who was most aggressively committed to the principle that there was little room in the church for clerics who were not under monastic discipline. Once at Winchester, he started an intense programme of similar reforms elsewhere, sending out trained and committed monks as abbots and serving Edgar’s political interests by expanding his influence eastwards into regions where it had not previously been strong. Two of Aethelwold’s re-foundations, Ely and Peterborough, survive as major cathedrals.

At his death in 984, Aethelwold left behind a reform movement in vigorous expansion thanks to a generation of monks he had trained; a corpus of writings that included classical scholarship, religious manuals, and poetry; a ‘Winchester School’ of manuscript illumination; and a group of former pupils who venerated him and ensured his canonisation as St Aethelwold.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

(Image in the Public Domain)

Alexander of Abingdon

About the turn of the fourteenth century a group of artisans and artificers working at and around the royal court developed a distinct ‘Westminster style’ of architectural ornament and sculpture. Alexander ‘le Ymagor’ or ‘of Abingdon’ was an important member. Little is known about him, but there is evidence that he achieved distinction as a sculptor, specialising in the human figure; less respected workmen would not have been able to specialise. He became a citizen of London, a high social status for one of his trade. There were at the time at least two sculptors named ‘of Abingdon’, the other being Johannes who worked at Merton College, Oxford, in 1290-1, as well as several masons. There will have been employment for many such craftsmen at Abingdon Abbey where the great church had recently been rebuilt, and it is supposed there was provision for training them.

Alexander’s reputation is based on his work on the Eleanor Crosses. Queen Eleanor of Castile died at Harby in Nottinghamshire in 1290, and her grieving husband, Edward I, had a cross erected at each point where the funeral cortege stayed overnight on the way to her burial at Westminster Abbey – twelve of them altogether. It was not usual at the time to associate a given work of art with a particular artist, but there is documentary evidence that Alexander was directly responsible for the three effigies of Eleanor on the cross at Waltham in Essex. The originals, very weathered, were removed and replaced in the nineteenth century. Stylistically, they stand at a point where Gothic tradition begins to evolve into Decorated. Alexander’s figures are marked by a certain sinuosity of the bodily stance and a particular emphasis on the fall of the draperies.

Side views of Eleanor of Castile, from the Eleanor Cross at Waltham, Herts, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.(Photo: J. Brod)

Waltham Cross in 2011, last restored in 1989, with 19th century replacement statues.(Photo by Christine Matthews, licensed under Creative Commons)

Waltham Cross, in about 1803, showing original sculptures.Engraved by J. Greig from a painting by G. Arnold (Internet resource)

Shrine of St Edburg at St Michael’s Church, Stanton Harcourt.(Photo © Michael Garlick (licensed under creative commons-by-sa/2.0))

A number of other sculptures of the period have been attributed, with greater or less confidence, to Alexander. These include effigies and weepers on the tombs of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, and his wife Aveline in Westminster Abbey, and others at Ely, Wells and Canterbury Cathedrals.

St Michael’s Church at Stanton Harcourt has a shrine to the seventh century St Edburg that is locally believed to be by Alexander. It came from Bicester Priory which was suppressed under Henry VIII.

The picture at the top shows a well-preserved Virgin and Child that is claimed, somewhat mysteriously, to have been “found in a house in Newbury” as recently as the 1980s and is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York as Alexander’s work.

While there are few craftsmen of Alexander’s time whose careers are as well documented as his, the fact remains that it is only the Eleanor Cross sculptures that are certainly known to be by him. Other attributions can be based only on local tradition or on stylistic judgement and must remain tentative.

Aelfric of Abingdon

Aelfric of Abingdon, future Archbishop of Canterbury, started his career as a monk of Abingdon Abbey. It was a time when Anglo-Saxon England was enjoying a period of relative stability and prosperity under the Wessex kings. English monasticism was in a process of reform and revival under Aethelwold, Abbot of Abingdon from 954 to 963 and later Bishop of Winchester (see article on this website), and his contemporaries Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 988 and Oswald, Archbishop of York from 971 to 992. However, Aelfric’s maturity was a period of decline, marked by a resurgence of large-scale Viking raids and the ineptness of the young king Aethelred II (reigned 978-1016) nicknamed ‘the Unready’ (or, more accurately, ‘ill-advised’).

Aelfric was of a prominent Kentish family, and he came to Abingdon either during the abbacy of Aethelwold or that of his successor, Osgar (964-984). He later became abbot of St Albans and about 990 was made bishop of Ramsbury, which gave him episcopal responsibility for Abingdon and its abbey. In 995 he was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury, although he retained the Ramsbury bishopric. His main importance in the history of Abingdon is that he was instrumental in regaining for Abingdon Abbey its liberty to elect its own abbots and the return of several estates that had been lost since the death of Aethelwold in 984.

Aethelwold had adopted a French practice of including in his charters statements that anyone breaking their terms to the detriment of the monks would be under a curse. Nonetheless, after 984 when both Aethelwold and Osgar died, King Aethelred gave the abbacy to an unsuitable candidate in exchange for a large sum of money and began to take over and disperse the Abbey’s endowments. In the early 990s, with the resumption of intense and destructive Viking incursions, Aethelred became convinced that the curse was taking effect. There was a negotiation in which Aelfric must have taken a major part, and at Pentecost (Whitsun) 993, at a large gathering in Winchester, the king admitted his faults and issued a charter of reconciliation. The monks had shown their forgiveness by asking God to forgive him. They had celebrated 1500 masses and completed a thousand ‘singings’ of psalms for the king’s soul, and he now guaranteed the abbey’s liberties and began a lengthy process of returning its properties. Aelfric was one of the first of a long list of witnesses to the charter. He was also given one of the disputed estates, which he duly left to the abbey in his will.

As archbishop, Aelfric showed himself a worthy follower of Aethelwold and the other reformers of the previous generation. It was during his tenure that vitae – hagiographic biographies – of Aethelwold, Dunstan and Oswald were prepared as a preliminary to their canonisation. At Canterbury, he pushed forward Aethelwold’s agenda of replacing secular canons with monks.

However, unlike his great predecessors, Aelfric does not seem to have been noteworthy as a scholar. The times required more warlike interests; his will, which survives, leaves the king ‘his best ship’ and equipment for sixty soldiers, and it relieves the people of Kent and Wiltshire of the taxes they would otherwise have had to pay for additional ships. When Aelfric died in 1005, he was initially buried at Abingdon, and his memorial described him as ‘Guardian of the homeland of the English’ and ‘Defender of the Kingdom’. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what he had done to earn these commendations. His remains were transferred to Canterbury in 1023.

Aelfric of Abingdon (or ‘of Wessex’) should not be confused with his several contemporary namesakes, such as Aelfric of Eynsham, a scholar and biographer of Aethelwold, or the wealthy Aelfric of Mercia who bought the abbacy of Abingdon for his kinsman, Eadwine.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

Roger Amyce

Roger Amyce was a man of importance in Abingdon in the mid-sixteenth century. In 1547, as a middle-ranking civil servant, he became ‘surveyor’ or supervisor in Berkshire of all the many properties that had fallen to the Crown as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries and of the guilds. Since almost all of Abingdon had been the property of its now-dissolved Abbey, and the guilds or fraternities no longer existed as local institutions, he took on much of the responsibility for the economic administration of the town. He authorised bridge repairs, and worked with the entrepreneur William Blacknall to develop local industries, including the manufacture of sailcloth. He helped to set up the charity of Christ’s Hospital to replace some of the functions of the dissolved Holy Cross Fraternity, and was its first auditor and then its second master, following Sir John Mason. It had been Mason who had convinced the Privy Council to allow the new foundation, but Amyce claimed, probably justly, that the initiative had been his.

Amyce’s main service to the town of Abingdon was in his survey, which was completed in 1554. This was essentially a listing of all properties in the town, with their ownership and financial yield. Two years later, those properties which still belonged to the Crown were granted to the town in its new charter of incorporation. The annual rent that the new Corporation would have to pay for them was calculated on the basis of Amyce’s figures, after the costs of repairs and maintenance. Abingdon’s Corporation was unique in its time for the sheer volume of property it owned.

At least two contemporary manuscript copies of Amyce’s survey still exist and there are several later transcripts and translations. They are an invaluable source for the history of the town in the sixteenth century.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

George Argyle and the beginnings of the Argyle Dairy

The Argyle family have lived in the Abingdon area for a long time. In 1775 Richard Argyle of nearby Sutton Wick married Ann Barnett in Abingdon, where she had been born. Their son Richard was grandfather to George Henry Argyle (1865-1945), my great-grandfather and founder of the Argyle Dairy.

George Argyle’s family were nonconformists. Two of his uncles became Baptist pastors – they were teetotallers as their nephew George would be. A niece, Olive, was one of the first two women to be made deacons of Abingdon Baptist chapel. Percival, a nephew, was a local journalist and reported on the First World War.

The Argyle name has been well known in Abingdon for another reason: the tradition of morris dancing and the mock mayor of Ock Street. George’s younger brother Albert was grandfather to the late Leslie Argyle who was prominent in morris dancing in both Abingdon and in Oxford for many years. He led the Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers and was elected as ’mayor’ of Ock Street every year from 1980 to 1995.

In 1881, according to the census that year, George Henry Argyle was a sixteen-year old dairy boy living with his parents in Edward Street in Abingdon. The milk industry was good for George in more ways than one. Delivery of dairy products may even have led to his marriage. His future wife probably met him regularly twice a day in the course of their work because part of his delivery route lay along Marcham Road where Ellen Sessions lived and worked with her sister Eliza in the home of Bromley Challenor, Town Clerk of Abingdon. The young women had left their parents in nearby Wantage to earn livings as domestic servants. In 1889 George and Ellen were married.

In the 1891 census year, George Argyle was a dairyman living in Ock Street with his wife Ellen and infant son Arthur. Ten years on, the 1901 census records him as a milk purveyor living with his wife and now three children at 14 Victoria Road. Part of that building, located on the corner of Edward Street and Victoria Road, served as his newly owned dairy. This happy change in status had been made possible unexpectedly by the dishonesty of George’s former boss. A little detective work had told George that his employer was watering down the milk which he, George, must sell to disgruntled customers. When he worked out what was going on he left, and in a daring move took the risk of starting up his own business. The Argyle Dairy quickly did well enough to have its name inscribed over the main door.

The Argyle Dairy in about 1904, after the sale of the dairy to Charles Burt (standing at the entrance) who continued to use the Argyle Dairy name
(© From the author’s private collection)

The former Argyle Dairy, now a private house, in 2013
(© From the author’s private collection)

George and Ellen had four children, John, Nellie, Gertie and Arthur, Gertrude Florence Mary being my grandmother. The family lived behind and over the dairy and were successful enough to employ a maid who wore the typical black dress, white apron and cap of servants in well-to-do Victorian and Edwardian homes.

John, Ellen, George, Nellie, Gertie, Arthur
(© From the author’s private collection)

The couple followed a steady routine. Each morning George got fresh milk from a farmer along Spring Road and returned home standing on his horse-pulled cart, a large urn full of milk lodged beside him for company.

A milk cart similar to the one George Argyle would have used.The photograph was taken in about 1920 in Edward Street just round the corner from the front of the dairy building in Victoria Road. It is in the possession of Barbara Ayers, great-granddaughter of Charles Burt who bought the dairy from George Argyle.
(Copyright By kind permission of Barbara Ayers)

It was then the job of Ellen, my great grandmother – his full working partner – to filter the milk through clean cloths and pour it into tin containers which were measured in gills and pints. Pasteurization was not yet part of their dairy’s process. The rest of the milk was poured into a fresh and clean urn which would be hoisted up onto the cart. George would dispense whatever quantity of milk a customer might need into his or her own jug right at the householder’s door, or the customer could buy a standard amount.

In the afternoon the pattern was repeated. George’s two older children helped a bit. Arthur earned six pennies weekly for his deliveries by pushcart to houses beyond his father’s own route, and Gertie earned three pennies for light loads carried to two homes in Spring Road. Meanwhile on the Argyle Dairy premises Ellen washed all surfaces thoroughly, churned butter, made cream and served as a salesperson.

But George had another interest which would overwhelm all else in his life. In the years of his marriage and parenthood, if not earlier, he was known to be an avid reader of Biblical scripture. Around 1900 a sect known as Russellites was becoming popular. They would later rename themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses. George became one of them and in 1903 he sold the Dairy outright, much against Ellen’s advice.

George Henry Argyle holds a religious text entitled The Finished Mystery. This work, the seventh in the series Studies in the Scriptures by Charles Taze Russell, was published posthumously in 1917.
(© From the author’s private collection)

George’s sale of the dairy marked the end of the Argyles’ hard-won prosperity. He took the family from Abingdon, the long-time home of the Argyles, to Reading where he could much more readily attend Russellite meetings. The Battle Street general store which they purchased in Reading turned out to be a very short-term experience. Ellen suffered violent headaches from the fumes of kerosene which was sold from barrels at the front of the premises. Then it was on to an attempt at market gardening in Tilehurst which yielded meagre profits.

Their eldest son, Arthur, had gone to Canada in 1911. He claimed that ample employment was available in Toronto and urged his father to emigrate. George took the challenge and uprooted the family once again. George, Ellen, Gertie, Nellie, John, and Gertie’s new husband Jack Ledsham all voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean in April 1913 aboard the steamship Ascania en route to Portland, Maine and then to Toronto.

When George moved his family to Reading he sold the dairy to Charles Burt who continued to use the Argyle Dairy name.

Some thirty five years later, the Burt family sold the business on. It was eventually acquired by James Candy, the main local competitor, who adopted the Argyle name – the combined business was called the Argyle & Candy Dairy. It was only when United Dairies, a much larger concern, took over the business in the 1990s that the name Argyle ceased to be connected with the milk trade in Abingdon.

George Argyle died in Toronto in 1945 and Ellen in 1957.

George and Ellen’s grave marker in Toronto. Some of their descendants had Ellen’s dates added to the marker early in 2020.
(© From the author’s private collection)

Sandra Marie Lewis

Agnes Baker

Agnes Charlotte Baker is one of Abingdon’s foremost historians. For twenty years she worked with Arthur Preston to extract the history of the town from its archives and from Preston’s own collection of documents. She later wrote many short articles making this history approachable for the non-specialist reader.

Agnes Baker was born in Banbury, the younger daughter of Thomas Baker, a draper/outfitter, and his wife Alice. After completing an honours degree in history at Reading University she was recommended by Professor (later Sir) Frank Stenton to Arthur Preston, who was seeking a secretary/historical assistant. Preston had earlier retired from professional life as an accountant to take up other pursuits. These notably included research on Abingdon’s history and he had recently supervised the 1922 excavations of Abingdon Abbey.

Agnes Baker lived with Preston and his wife Lydia in their large house, Whitefield, in Park Crescent, from 1932 until Preston’s death in 1942. She was essentially an adopted daughter – the Prestons had no children – and accompanied them on their worldwide travels. Lydia called her ‘Nessie’, but to Arthur Preston she was always ‘Miss Baker.’ When Preston died she was his literary executrix.

During the war years she worked for the National Buildings Record Society, then housed in All Souls College, Oxford, working under Walter H Godfrey. In 1946 she purchased ‘Ivy Cottages’ at 26-26a East St Helen Street, a group of cottages which had been scheduled for demolition in the 1930s as unfit for human habitation though seemingly suitable as accommodation for evacuees.

Agnes Baker’s love of drama prompted her to write a play to be performed by the Boy Scouts in the district. ‘Scenes from Abingdon History’ was performed in the Corn Exchange on 1 and 3 May 1924. The central theme was Abingdon Abbey. This was the first of her historical plays, which was revised and augmented three years later. In 1929 ‘Further Scenes from Abingdon’s History’ was written for the Guild of Abbey Players – the precursor of Abingdon Drama Club – of which she was elected Master. She was also responsible for the historical processions celebrating the silver jubilee of George V in 1935 and the coronation of George VI in 1937.

Agnes Baker was a founder member of the Friends of Abingdon, formed in 1944 to preserve the surviving buildings of Abingdon Abbey and protect the town’s built environment. She was a natural choice as first secretary of the new society. In this role she renewed her acquaintance with Walter Godfrey, writing a booklet for the Friends entitled Abingdon Abbey: Some Notes on its History and Buildings, with architectural description and plans by Godfrey. She was also a member of the Berkshire Archaeological Society.

Agnes Baker died at her home on 27 February 1955. A small memorial tablet, designed by Walter Godfrey and executed by Albert Lock, a local stonemason, was placed in St Nicolas’ Church beneath the memorial to the Prestons.

Published Works (some published posthumously)

Scenes from Abingdon History (1924, rev. 1927)
Abingdon Abbey: some notes on its history and buildings (1949) (with Walter H. Godfrey and Arthur Preston)
(edited) Arthur Preston, The Abingdon Corporation Plate (1958)

Historic Abingdon series:
Historic Streets of Abingdon (1957)
Seven Articles (1957) (with Arthur Preston)
Fifty-Six Articles (1963)
Fifty-Three Articles (1963)

The Beesley and Barrett families

From 1883 until 2001 the clothing business of Beesley’s was a respected family firm serving Abingdon and the surrounding villages. Even in 1883, it was already an old-established concern, trading as a mercer’s from the same premises.

Its recent history starts with William Beesley (about 1831-1883) and his wife Susan (d.1895). They are first recorded in Abingdon in 1850. Then or soon after, William began working for the Harris family, mercers, at 24 High Street.

In 1883 William was left the business in the will of Hannah Harris (widow), the last of that family. William lived for only a few weeks after inheriting the business, dying at the age of fifty-two, but his widow and their eldest son Ernest Herbert (d.1949) carried on the business.

In 1908 Oswald Barrett (about 1894-1983), a builder’s son from West Hanney, joined Ernest Beesley as an errand boy and junior sales assistant. After service in the First World War he rejoined Mr Beesley and soon became a partner in the firm of E H Beesley, Tailors and Outfitters, sealing the partnership by marrying Mr Beesley’s eldest daughter, Gladys (1899-1978), in 1926.

In the early 1920s the partnership bought the boot and shoe shop of J N Paul Ltd. It was situated on the corner of Winsmore Lane where Lloyds TSB Bank now stands. It moved firstly to 16 High Street and then to 26 High Street next to the main business, into which it was incorporated in 1971. A number of allied acquisitions between the wars proved less successful and were disposed of by 1948.

On the death of Ernest Beesley at Christmas 1949 his three daughters Gladys Barrett, Phyllis (1904-1963) and Madge [Hammond] (1901-1966) became partners with Oswald.

On 1 January 1950, David Barrett, (b. 1929) the son of Oswald and Gladys, joined the firm. He became a partner in 1954 and his wife Mollie (b.1930) in 1967.

Both Phyllis and Madge died in the 1960s. In 1968 Oswald suffered a heart attack and he and his wife retired from active participation in the firm, leaving David and Mollie to continue. The main business at 22-24 High Street dealt with menswear, ladies wear, school wear, drapery, and fabrics, while J. N. Paul Ltd at No 26 concentrated on footwear.

Gladys died in 1978 and Oswald in 1983, and in 1984 the main business was sold to Hodges Ltd, a large clothing company based in Swansea. It continued to trade from 24 High Street as Hodges and later as Dunn’s, but went into liquidation in 1996. David and Mollie Barrett continued at 26 High Street operating the school wear side of the old business, which Hodges had not acquired. This closed late in 1998. The Beesley company was finally liquidated in 2001 after over a hundred years in the hands of one family.

David Barrett

James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon, by Sir Geoffrey Kneller

James Bertie, 1st Earl of Abingdon

James Bertie, who would be the first Earl of Abingdon, was born in 1653. He was a younger son of the second Earl of Lindsey, so would not inherit the title. His mother Bridget, the earl’s second wife, was a descendant of an Earl of Berkshire, but that title had become extinct for lack of male heirs. However, the Earl of Berkshire had simultaneously held a barony which could descend through the female line. Thus, when Bridget died in 1657 the young James became the fifth Baron Norreys of Rycote. He was owner of extensive properties in Oxfordshire and Berkshire; the main ones were at Wytham and Rycote. In adulthood, he would make Rycote his principal residence.

A half-sister of James was married to an important politician under Charles II, the Earl of Danby. It was a time of vicious, sometimes literally deadly, political conflict. In 1674, Danby made James, although scarcely of age, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire with the remit of bringing the strongly Whig city of Oxford under Tory control. This he achieved over time by merciless harassment of the leading Whig councillors, bringing trumped-up lawsuits against them, ruining their businesses, and forcing a surrender of their charter. He promised that a new charter would increase the city’s liberties against the customary outrageous and humiliating demands of the university. To his chagrin, the university refused to give way. However, he did manage to position himself as the city’s defender, and finished in 1687 by being made its High Steward.

He held no official position in Abingdon, since it had the Earl of Clarendon as its High Steward, and his own authority was nominally restricted to Oxfordshire. Nonetheless, he intervened actively in its internal politics, using a Tory corporation member, George Winchurst, as his agent. This resulted in 1684 in the surrender of the town’s 1663 charter and the issue of a new one that brought in outsiders as magistrates and gave the central government additional powers to control membership of the Corporation. Clarendon seems to have acquiesced. The new charter would, however, be abrogated in 1688.

In 1681, Charles II, in pursuit of his political agenda, called a parliament to sit in Oxford, far from the Whig pressures of London. Bertie organised the event, and later in the year managed the legal proceedings against the Whig activist, Stephen Colledge. This was a high profile case, intended to frighten and demoralise the Whigs. Bertie hand-picked the jury, put his brother Henry on it as foreman, and used the notorious Edmund Warcup to recruit and rehearse a team of ‘witnesses’ to a totally imaginary crime of treason. Colledge was duly condemned and executed. Bertie at that point achieved his earldom, and there were civic celebrations in Abingdon when it emerged that he had chosen that town for his title.

James II invited the Earl to become Catholic, and dismissed him from all his functions when he refused. When the future William III invaded in 1688, the Earl of Abingdon was the first important British nobleman to desert to his camp. Nonetheless, he seems to have been slow to realise that William intended to seize the crown, and in the crucial division in the House of Lords voted that the throne was not vacant. This lost him credit with the new regime, but he made his submission and his career continued.

Bertie married Eleanora Lee in about 1672. They had five children. When his wife died in 1691, he commissioned John Dryden, the poet laureate, to compose an elegiac poem in her memory. It was a purely business arrangement; the poet had never met the lady. The product was notable as being probably the worst poem Dryden ever wrote, in almost 400 lines of mechanical rhyming couplets. The Earl remarried, but died in 1699 without further offspring.

The first Earl of Abingdon was never High Steward of the town. His son Montague succeeded him as second earl and as High Steward of Oxford and Wallingford, but had to wait for Clarendon’s death in 1709 to take up the office in Abingdon. He would later add Banbury to his patronage list, and had an active political career which included switching from the Tory to the Whig benches. From 1709, the high stewardship of Abingdon would be inherited with the earldom, as it still is today.

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