Unlisted - Abingdon on Thames Town Council

Figure 1 Caldecott House, west elevation

Caldecott House (demolished 1972, was on Caldecott Road)

Caldecott House was on the north side of Caldecott Road and at the time of its demolition in 1972 was one of the largest houses in Abingdon (Fig. 1). But very little is known about its builders, and no formal record of it was made before or during its demolition. Yet is has been possible to put together a plausible history, from maps and documentary evidence. In particular a map commissioned by its owner in 1762 (Fig. 2) has been particularly useful in understanding not only what the house looked like at that time, but also the nature of the landscaped garden in which it stood.

Figure 2.
1762 estate map – north to right.
(© Abingdon County Hall Museum, accession number ti 1633.67.15)

It seems that the earliest part – to the left in Figure1 and a red square on the map – was built in 1738 as a datestone was recorded there and so the likely builder was John Saxton who was leasing the property from Christ’s Hospital at that time. It lay behind an earlier farmhouse, which was demolished by William Birch in the 1760s when he extended the house to the north. The palatial pile to the right of Figure 1, dwarfing Saxton’s house beside, was probably built by the Lintells, who bought Caldecott in 1829. The final gentrification to create a symmetrical east front carried out by Major-General Bailie in the 1890s.

Too big for a family home in the 1930s, it had a short period as an hotel but was requisitioned in 1940 by the Air Ministry for Bomber Command Accounts staff. From 1945 Caldecott House was a Dr Barnardo’s home until it closed on 31 August 1971. It was demolished the following year and there is now a housing estate on the former grounds. The only structures to survive are the lodge of 1870 on Caldecott Road and a stone archway from the Bailies’ garden.

A significant feature of the earlier garden was a double-moated feature called the Wilderness, which survives in part, though it is not easily datable – it could have medieval origins, though more likely was created as an orchard in the seventeenth century.

© AAAHS and contributors 2021

Former County Police Station in 2001. The Police Station is on the right.

Former County Police Station, Bridge Street

About to be remodelled at the time of writing as part of the Old Gaol development, the former County Police Station dominates the west side of Bridge Street. It was built in 1856-7 and the architect was J B Clacy. When built, it had domestic accommodation for a superintendent and a sergeant, and stables to the rear for them to use when visiting outposts elsewhere in the county. The building to the left in a very similar style replaced a former court room, but this was demolished in 2011 to make a new entrance to the Old Gaol.

Inside the police station, there was a rabbit-warren of rooms, and all the domestic areas had been converted to offices by 1999 when it closed. However, it did have a suite of three cells deep inside. It is unlikely that these will survive the redevelopment.

The building is currently awaiting redevelopment and is not open to the public.

Click here for a PDF with further details.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Lacies Court, Abingdon School, Park Road

Lacies Court is the headmaster’s house at Abingdon School but it had a long and colourful earlier history. In the Middle Ages there was a farmhouse here belonging to Abingdon Abbey, and the core of the present house may indeed be medieval. After the Dissolution, it passed to Christ’s Hospital, who rented it out. One of the tenants was Walter Dayrell, a lawyer and an important citizen in Abingdon in the early seventeenth century. Dr Peter Heylyn, clergyman and historian, arrived in 1653 and may have been responsible for building the small timber-framed extension at the west end for his oratory.

The house was acquired by the school in 1895, and in 1902 was radically extended and restored in an Arts and Crafts style by local architect Harry Redfern, a former pupil of the school. He seems to have moved features like doorways and staircases, but he may have also brought some of these in from elsewhere. There was a further major reconstruction after a fire in 1935 when the east end was largely rebuilt. In the 1950s a historic fireplace from 7-9 High Street was installed in the house.

The atom spy, Klaus Fuchs, stayed there in the 1940s when it was lodging for Harwell scientists.

The house is within the grounds of the school and is private property.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2019

86-92 Ock Street

These three-storey houses were built soon after 1823 in a Corporation initiative that was unusual for the time. Normally, leases were automatically renewed at rates that had not changed for two hundred years, and leaseholders were free to use the sites as they wished. Here, several leases that had fallen in were taken in hand and the plot boundaries reorganised. The site was cleared, and new leases issued to the highest bidders.

Conditions were set for the stretch fronting Ock Street. New houses were to be built within the year; they were to be of uniform construction, brick-built, and with sash windows. They were to be at least 21 feet high to the roof plate, and at least 15 feet deep (6.3 m and 4.5 m). They should not be of worse appearance than ‘those lately built by Robert Stiles in the same street’.

The obvious intention was to build houses for the more affluent among the working class, and it would seem that the Corporation was concerned to give the impression, to anyone who did not penetrate too far behind the main streets, of a prosperous and well-governed town.

Part of the interest to the leaseholders, who paid heavily for their new privilege, was that they could now develop the land behind the street, going down to the field known as the Thistlecroft. By 1838, this had become a row of slum houses known as Brooker’s Yard.

Today, Brooker’s Yard and the Thistlecroft have become the Meadowside estate.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Our Lady and St Edmunds Church, south elevation

Our Lady and St Edmunds Church, Radley Road

In the triangle of land bounded by Radley Road, Oxford Road and St John’s Road to the north-east of the centre of Abingdon is a group of buildings including the church of Our Lady and St Edmund, the former buildings of the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy and Our Lady’s School. The history of the site has been well outlined by others, and three of the key people involved – Sir George Bowyer, Father J P O’Toole, and the architect William Wardell – are featured elsewhere in these web pages. This page discusses some of the buildings on the site.

First to be built was the presbytery, an eclectic riot of Gothic revival motifs and features, which was complete by 1855 (Fig.1). The priest, the Revd Dr John Paul O’Toole, lived here and it was where he celebrated the first masses. By 1857 the cloister and part of the church – the chancel and the adjacent chapel to the south – were in place, but Wardell, by now in bad health, left the project and emigrated to Australia, where he spent the rest of his life. The church was completed by George Goldie in 1865 (Figs.2 & 3).

One of the puzzles of the church is how much had been completed by the time Wardell left. While there are clear stylistic differences between the nave and chancel, these can also be explained by the normal convention that the chancel is more highly decorated than the nave, and by the wish of the patron, Sir George Bowyer, for simplicity and cost-cutting. There is also no internal evidence of how the west end of the chancel and the chapel was made weatherproof so that services could be held there.

The nave has identical arcades to the north and south aisles. The capitals are plain stone cylinders – as if the intention was that they be carved at a later date. The east window has a panel commemorating Sir George Bowyer’s gifts to the community. Bowyer himself is depicted offering a model of the church to St Edmund (Fig.4). This model shows the church pretty much as it appears today, except that the bell-cote has two bells (the present one has only one) and is nothing like the spirelet shown in Figure 3. For the intriguing story of this window click the ‘see long history’ at the top of this page.

Figure 3 The church before 1884 (Henry Taunt, HT02022<.strong>
© Oxfordshire County Council Photographic Archive)

Figure 4 Bowyer with a model of the church
(© D Clark 2015)

Meanwhile, concerned about exploitation of child labour, O’Toole had in 1857 established a primary school, and in 1859 the Sisters of Mercy from Bermondsey arrived to set up a convent in Abingdon and to teach in the school. Their convent buildings – designed by Goldie as a pair of semi-detached houses – were completed in 1862.

By 1866 the idea of a boarding school for girls had begun to take shape and the first pupils lived at and were taught in the convent. Purpose-built accommodation adjacent to the convent and designed by Edwin Dolby, an Abingdon architect, was opened in 1877. The school chapel designed by Frederick Walters was completed in 1884.

A permanent building for the primary school – now known as St Edmund’s school – was also needed, and in 1873 Sir George Bowyer again stepped in to pay for a small stone building on the Oxford Road, designed by Edwin Dolby, which is now the parish centre.

The last decade of the century saw further building work, including extensions to the girls’ school and convent, and a new boys’ school, built in 1892 by Abingdon architect, J G T West.

The school continued to develop and expand in the twentieth century, with new buildings and extensions and re-cladding of earlier ones. A modernist rusty steel-clad Design and Technology centre was built in 2013.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2017

Summerfield from Wooton Road in 2008. It was demolished in 2012 to allow construction of a block of retirement flats. English Heritage were unable to recommend it for listing.

Summerfield (demolished 2012, was on the Wootton Road)

Summerfield was a large house on the west side of Wootton Road, built in 1902 and designed by Abingdon-born Arts-and-Crafts architect Harry Redfern. The client was Thomas Skurray, a dynamic and influential director of the local brewery, Morlands. It was demolished in 2012.

The house consisted of a long east-west range from which two wings projected to the north. The north elevation contained all the architectural panache. Here was the front door, behind a timber porch, then a four-light stone mullioned casement window to the ground floor and some (false) close-studded timber above. The right hand (west) wing contained a stair tower.

Front entrance
(© D Clark 2008)

To the west, a hacienda-like wing extended across the property with a central low carriage-arch. This may have been a service wing or a coach-house/store.

By 2008 the interior was compromised by the later uses of the house, and as a result the then English Heritage refused to recommend Summerfield for Listing. However, a number of original features did survive. It was also possible to ignore the modern partitions and see that once inside the front door, an inner porch led to a wide sitting area lit by the stone window. The staircase was a striking feature, open-well to the first floor, closed string above, all in a workmanlike Arts-and-Crafts fashion.

The main reception rooms seem to have been in the eastern part, the best room being that facing the garden to the rear. It had a bay window overlooking the garden, and a feature fireplace – a sort of open inglenook, with a balustrade at one side and an unusual tiled surround to the fireplace.

Enclosed fireplace in main reception room

Also on the ground floor the dining room had a further fine fireplace, timbered with a carved frieze. The service rooms were devoid of identifying features, and in particular there was no obvious kitchen, but it must have been close to the cellar area to the rear.

The rooms on all floors faced the garden – the circulation was by a corridor to the rear – also a feature of Mackintosh’s Hill House (Helensburgh, 1902-4). In the bedrooms were some good turn-of-the-century iron fire surrounds with scallop shell decoration, and painted white.

Harry Redfern’s architectural career is described elsewhere. Summerfield seems to be one of his more eclectic works. It contained motifs from a number of periods and regions – the close studding a southern medieval status symbol, the stone mullioned window a late medieval Cotswold feature, while from the seventeenth century were the stair turret and an oriel window. The render on the house echoed Voysey and Mackintosh, while the latter’s influence could also be seen in the floor plan. Baillie Scott was also influential, as at Redfern’s work at Lacies Court nearby, although here it is mainly external – we have no internal double height hall – but the inglenook fireplace has echoes of Blackwell. The sitting area near the front door is packed with Arts-and-Crafts features – the stone mullioned window, the timber framing of the staircase, and a space for meeting, speaking or waiting, doubtless very useful and innovative. One feature which was not present before demolition was a window illustrating Noah’s Ark by Sir Laurence Weaver. No record has been found of when this was removed, or where it is now.

The possible original layout is shown below:

Criticised by the locals when built as ‘modern, art nouveau, and Cotswold’ – a comment that today would be regarded as praise – Summerfield was a house which probably emerged from a close interaction between client and architect, resulting in an appealing blend of styles, none of which jarred, and the result was one of Redfern’s best domestic buildings. A number of original internal features remained, and, with modern partitions stripped out, it could relatively easily have been returned to the grand family home it once was. Sadly this was not to be. Skurray died in 1938 and after lying empty for a couple of years, Summerfield was acquired by Berkshire County Council as an Evacuee Clinic – for children who were unable to settle into their new environment. It remained a clinic throughout the 1950s, with a resident Matron, Miss E L Walker. When the Vale of White Horse became part of Oxfordshire in 1974, Summerfield was transferred to the County Council, as an outpost of their Social Services department. Before demolition it was occupied by Champion Employment, and there is now a block of sheltered apartments on the site. The name, ‘Summerfield’ lives on, however, at the offices that the County Council built on its garden.

The Warren Hospital (demolished 1984, was off the Radley Road)

‘The Warren’ was a large Victorian house built on the Radley Road in the 1890s by Adam Fettiplace Blandy and his wife Elizabeth Mary (née Nicholl-Carne). With a family of thirteen children plus staff they needed a sizeable residence!

The land on which ‘The Warren’ was built originally belonged to Abingdon Abbey and was part of the home farm of the Manor of Barton. In 1252, the abbot obtained a grant of free warren in the manor of Barton, that is the right to keep and hunt beasts (including rabbits) and fowl. There is a strong likelihood that this site alongside the Radley Road was covered by the grant, and that the house took its name from the site. It is south facing and with light, free draining soil sloping down to a spring-fed pond and could well have included a rabbit warren.

One of the sons, Robert Acton Blandy, was killed in the Boer War. Adam Fettiplace Blandy died of a broken heart soon after hearing of his son’s death, but Mrs Blandy continued to live in the house until 1915. In 1920 it was bought by Sir George Dashwood. It was occupied by a Major B. Neame from 1927 to 1929.

‘The Warren’ was finally sold in 1930 and the house reopened later that year as a hospital, replacing the old cottage hospital in Bath Street. The Warren Hospital had beds for twenty-six patients in men’s, women’s and children’s wards, an operating theatre, and x-ray and therapy departments. The purchase price of the house was £4,500 and the total cost, including adaptation and fitting out, was around £9,000. The architects for the conversion were Messrs. West & Son and the builders were Buckle & Son.

The operating theatre. Photograph probably taken in 1930.
(© Courtesy of Abingdon County Hall Museum – ref: 1980.191.293)

The Warren was originally approached by a long drive running parallel to the Radley Road. This part of the site was developed in the 1930s with a row of seven detached houses set behind the old driveway.

The Warren Cottage Hospital became part of the NHS in 1948. In 1952, the general hospital services were transferred to Abingdon Hospital on the Marcham Road, and the Warren became a maternity hospital serving Abingdon and the surrounding area, manned by local GPs. The Warren is fondly remembered by many local mothers who had their babies there. The maternity unit was transferred to Marcham Road in July 1968, and in February 1969 the Warren Hospital was reopened by Dr Lionel Cosin and Miss Stone as a sixteen-bed geriatric unit. This closed in 1977, and the house was eventually demolished in 1984 to build The Warren housing estate.