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The Queen at Abingdon Airfield, 14 June 1968. Painting by Charles Cundall.(© Imperial War Museum (Art.IWM ART LD 6516))

RAF ABINGDON 

For sixty years, from 1932 to 1992, Abingdon Airfield was an important RAF base. Often such installations are isolated and socially self-contained, but this was not the case at Abingdon. The base was in walking distance of the town centre. RAF personnel and their families shopped and socialised in the town and sent their children to local schools. They helped with local charities, gave Christmas treats to children and old people, and thrilled visiting school classes with lunch in the mess followed by conversation with pilots whom they had just seen landing their planes. Many remained in the district after retirement.

The airfield at Abingdon began life as Shippon Manor airfield in the 1920s, giving rides to civilian thrill-seekers.  It was re-opened in 1932 as a bomber airfield. As well as housing aircraft, it was the centre for what was then called Central Area, before later being reorganised as 1 and 2 (Bomber) Groups as part of the new Bomber Command.

An Avro Tutor of the University Air Squadron at Abingdon Airfield before WWII(Photo Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum)

The public were able to visit for the first time in May 1934 during Empire Day when the RAF showed off its biplane bombers.

In September 1936 RAF Abingdon was in the news when Mrs Beryl Markham took off from there to become the first female pilot to fly the Atlantic from east to west.

The Abingdon Airfield as it was before 1959. The main N-S runway is about 2000m long(Image courtesy of Pat Minns)

As the threat of war loomed, the Abingdon squadrons were ordered to be operationally fit by September 1938. Although the tension eased after the Munich Agreement in September 1938, bombing and close-formation flying practice continued, even over France. The airfield acquired its first ‘satellite’ field at Kidlington with the aim of having somewhere to disperse to if Abingdon were badly attacked.  Another was built at Stanton Harcourt. In June 1939, following an Air Ministry initiative to connect squadrons with municipalities, 40 Squadron became ‘Abingdon’s Own’. The liaison did not last long; the squadron moved out at the outbreak of war in September. For the next six years, Abingdon airfield was where bomber crews acquired their skills.

In 1940 the base became 10 Operational Training Unit, equipped with Whitley and Anson aircraft, and in January 1941 it also became host to No. 1 BAT (Blind Approach Training) flight, teaching the techniques of bad weather flying. Its planes and crews flew occasional offensive missions, notably participating in the ‘thousand-bomber’ raids on Cologne and Essen and in anti-submarine patrols over the Bay of Biscay.

This Whitley bomber survived a spell at Abingdon, completing its career at Honeybourne in Worcestershire.(Photo Courtesey of Pat Minns)

On at least three occasions, the base was a target for enemy raiders. Fortunately, their aim was poor and their ordnance unreliable. Once, two bombs landed squarely on the airfield’s bomb store – and failed to explode. There was never more than minor damage, and only one case of serious injury.

There were, however, serious losses. Crews were inexperienced, the ageing Whitley bombers were underpowered, and they didn’t always manage to clear Boar’s Hill. There is a map online (www.rafabingdon10otu.co.uk) showing the sites where no fewer than eight Whitley bombers came down in the immediate area.

Sites of crashes of Whitley bombersafter taking off from Abingdon. Boars Hill was obviously a major hazard(Image courtesy of Pat Mimms)

The base was honoured with royal visits. King George VI inspected it in 1940 and returned a year later bringing his family – Queen Elizabeth, and the two princesses – who were entertained with a fly-past.

By December 1944, RAF personnel at the base numbered 11,394.  It was multinational: many of these aircrew were from allies in the Commonwealth and occupied Europe.

After the war, Abingdon’s squadrons lost their training role and became part of Transport Command. A major task here was taking part in the Berlin Airlift from 1948.  Even so, the public open days began again that year. Later, RAF Abingdon ran ‘ferry units’, carrying supplies to RAF operations around the world, including the Middle East Canal Zone, and delivering aircraft to Commonwealth forces. This role ended in the mid-1950s.

In June 1950 No.1 Parachute School moved from Upper Heyford to Abingdon, training army paratroopers. It had its moment of glory in 1959, when its facilities were the setting for part of a feature film starring the glamorous Brigitte Bardot (Babette goes to War). The newspapers reported that trainers and trainees declined weekend leave for fear of missing any action, but were disappointed when the lady appeared wearing nothing more revealing than military battledress. It was in Abingdon that the RAF Falcons parachute display team was formed in 1961. The School saw its one-millionth descent in 1969.  In 1976 it moved to Brize Norton.

Abingdon Airfield in about 1972 with the parachute training tower at the bottom left.(Photo Mick Lobb; licensed under Creative Commons)

In 1955 the station was granted the Freedom of the Borough of Abingdon, and the airmen marched down Ock Street with the traditional, though perhaps not totally appropriate, drawn swords and fixed bayonets. It was said to be the first time that an RAF station, as distinct from a particular unit, had been honoured in this way. The station also got a new crest which included Abingdon’s cross patonce. There was interaction on many levels between the station and the town. The station was open to townsfolk one day a week, and many took advantage of the Thrift Shop where families being posted elsewhere left unwanted goods to be sold. The Wives Club organised a weekly lunch club for the old at Trinity Church, and had fashion shows at the local clothes shops. Airmen helped to erect the annual Christmas tree in the Market Place.

Marching down Ock Street as the Mayor takes the salute
(By permission of the Mary Evans Picture Library)

RAF Abingdon’s new crest in 1955. It emphasises the local connection with its cross-patance (cross with 3-pronged  arms).
(Image courtesy of Pat Minns)

In 1956, the year of another royal visit, Beverley transport aircraft arrived, heavy four-engined freight aircraft, and the largest aircraft to enter RAF service. This additional capacity, together with its other operations, made Abingdon one of the busiest airfields in the UK.  These aircraft were used in the Suez crisis of that year. In 1957, a tragic accident occurred when a Beverley crashed after take-off, killing seventeen passengers, five crew and eight police dogs. Two civilians on the ground also died.  A wooden memorial marks the spot in Sutton Wick where the aircraft came down.

The tragic Beverley crash in March 1957.(Photo courtesy of the Oxford Mail)

Mayor Clement Barber in 1958 names a Beverley aircraft after the town.(From a film in possession of the AAAHS)

In June 1968, it was Abingdon that was chosen for the main celebrations to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Royal Air Force. The Queen and Prince Philip attended as did the Queen-Mother and the Queen’s aunts: the Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Marina. They all had lunch in the officers’ mess and then watched a spectacular flying display and toured a comprehensive static one. The show was repeated on the next day for the general public; there were 70,000 visitors.

From 1975, one of Abingdon’s main roles was engineering, maintenance and restoration, and the sound of Jaguar and Hawk jet-engines being taken to full power as part of their testing could be heard all over town.

In the 1990s, rumour turned to reality and the government’s major review of arms expenditure, partly resulting from the ending of the Cold War, had its effect on Abingdon.  Its various squadrons and facilities were gradually dispersed throughout the UK and, in 1992, the last aircraft left for Brize Norton.  In December of that year the RAF ensign was lowered as trumpeters played ‘The Last Post’ and the airfield was handed over to the army for units that were being withdrawn from Germany. RAF Abingdon was now Dalton Barracks.

We acknowledge the help of Bob Frampton as co-author, Pam Martin and Anne Baxter for personal reminiscences, and Pat Minns for permission to use elements from his website  http://www.rafabingdon10otu.co.uk/index.html .

© AAAHS and contributors 2020

Old traditional folk customs tend to die out and, perhaps, be replaced by new ones. But some don’t. Where they continue, it is usually because they have close links to a geographical location or community which provides custodians or ‘bearers’ of the tradition. It helps if there is association with a recurring calendar event, and if there are favourable attitudes towards the custom in the local and wider society. All of these can be seen to have played a part in the survival of morris dancing and the election of a Mayor of Ock Street in Abingdon annually in June. Nevertheless, there were a number of challenges to be faced along the way.

Until the late 1930s the morris side was not referred to as ‘Abingdon Morris’ but rather as the ‘Ock Street Morris Dancers’ and the links with the street were, and remain, very close. An annual June Fair was an occasion for horse and cattle dealing and was also a special feast for Ock Street residents which included morris dancing and electing a mock mayor. The first printed reference to the Mayor of Ock Street accompanied by his morris dancers occurs in 1825.

On Saturday last the curious, laughable, and annual ceremony of choosing a mayor for the Ock Street in this borough took place according to ancient custom… It appears that although the Ock Street is situate within the borough, the inhabitants have always been considered a distinct people, and during the latter part of the 16th century, many and serious were the disputes between the rival parties. These continued till the renewal of the charter of the borough in the year 1700 (according to tradition), when it was agreed that all disputes should terminate in a contest for the horns of an ox, which was to be roasted in the Bury to commemorate the above event. The contest at length did take place… One of the privileges obtained on this memorable day was, that the victors should have the exclusive liberty to parade the town the day succeeding the Ock Street fair, with moris-dancers, accompanied by a mayor chosen by themselves, and preceded by a mace-bearer carrying the aforesaid horns erected on a pole. This ceremony has been continued from the year 1700 to the present year. It was the custom till within these few years for the mayor of the borough to be present at the installation of the Ock Street, mayor, to congratulate him on his promotion, to view the ceremony of chairing, and to invite him to parade the borough (according to ancient custom…)…[1]

There are earlier references to morris dancing associated with Abingdon in 1560, 1722, 1768 and 1783 but these do not provide evidence for continuity with the form of dancing which took place at the Ock Street June Fair.[2]

An account in 1835 makes reference to unsuccessful attempts by the authorities to stop this and similar customs. The article gives us the first known name of an Ock Street Mayor, Thomas Leonard, who was described disparagingly as ‘an individual every way qualified to fill the important situation’.[3] Thomas Leonard is listed in the 1841 Census as a weaver, born around 1806, living in Ock Street.

The next newspaper reference is in 1849 when we learn that:

The election was productive of fine fun, the circumstance of the candidates styling themselves Sir. F. Thesiger (our respected member), and Gen. Caulfield (the late unsuccessful candidate for the Borough), and the election fell on the former by seven votes.[4]

This description points to one of the functions of mock mayor ceremonies, that of poking fun at figures of authority.[5]In Abingdon this would be quite understandable, as in 1590 the Borough Council decreed that:

 …noe person caule any of the Principal Burgesses or Secondary Burgesses knave or other name of reproche upon payne to forfayt Vs. [5 shillings] or els be commyted to prisin for five daies without bayle…[6]

This decree remained in force until 1835 and so the mock mayor ceremony could have provided an outlet for the poorer citizens of the town who wished to express their feelings about those in positions of power and privilege. This view is supported by the account of the ceremony given in 1855.

That portion of the Fair devoted to pleasure was as usual held and kept (for it partakes much of hospitality) in that portion of Ock Street known as the Fens. It was preceded by the ancient burlesque upon municipal institutions, the choosing a mayor of the locality for the year ensuing, who was duly installed and chaired with all the accustomed libations and honours, the individual selected for the mock civic dignity being one of the proper vagabond – we beg his worship’s pardon, we do not mean of the mean kind, but of the free and rollicking sort.[7]

Following on from the election of Thomas Leonard in 1835 the next known Mayor of Ock Street was Thomas Hemmings. He started dancing in 1840, was first elected in 1860, and held office on a number of occasions before handing on the position to his son William shortly before his death in 1885.[8] Thomas Hemmings was an agricultural labourer living in Smith’s Yard (Court 13) Ock Street. At least four of his children are known to have been morris dancers and three, William, James and Henry were later to become Mayors of Ock Street.

Thomas Hemmings in 1874 or 1880 [9]

The old custom of the Ock Street Morris Dancers has been revived this week, and caused some amusement.  On Monday [June 19th] residents were invited by bills to vote for Hughes, whilst others were asked to vote for Cox. Whether the voting took place or not is not clear, but Cox appears to have been elected to the honourable position of “Mayor”… The revival of this old custom is, however, far from what it used to be.[10]

William Hemmings, interviewed in 1910, said that he had been ‘mayor of the morris nine times’[11], but on this occasion he was not a contestant. No further accounts of either Cox or Hughes being involved in morris dancing or mayor-making have been found.

In 1900 it was reported that:

Mayor choosing and morris dancing were regular institutions, intermittently revived in late years.  This year the “Ock Street horns” were again brought out, but it must have required an effort to get up a team, who towards evening bore traces of having done a hard day’s work.[12]

The absence of the dancers was commented upon in 1902 which suggests that they may have appeared in 1901.[13] There seems to have been a lull in the ceremony until 1910 when visits to James and William Hemmings from London-based folklore collectors Mary Neal, Mabel Tuke and Cecil Sharp rekindled interest in the tradition.

REVIVAL OF MORRIS DANCING. The widespread attention given to the revival of Morris dancing led to the observance of an old Ock Street custom on the day following June Fair.  There was no choosing the Mayor of Ock Street as in olden times, but William Hemmings, son of a former “Mayor”, was recognised as still holding office… A fiddler completed the party, and the Ock Street horns, dated 1700, were brought out for the occasion.[15]

James and William Hemmings 1910 [14]

The figure in white at two o’clock in the picture is the famous Billy Hemmings – “King of Ock Street” – a title that has become extinct with the old man’s passing.  So far as the dancing is concerned the occasion depicted was a revival. I believe the lapse in this case was somewhere between 1900 and 1902 and I believe I am correct when I say that the actual revival took place in either 1910 or 1911.[17]

The Ock Street Morris Dancers 1910  [18]

JUNE FAIR.-…For the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitant there was no pleasure fair, but the old-time Morris Dancers went round on Wednesday.[19]

There are no further newspaper reports of the Ock Street men dancing in the period before the First World War. Accounts from oral histories collected by the author, and the morris dance researchers Keith Chandler and David ‘Doc’ Rowe, indicate that the Hemmings family and their friends kept up aspects of the dancing in the back gardens of Ock Street after World War 1 and there is photographic evidence of this from 1929 onwards. But dancing in public did not resume until 1937.[20]

Although the revival of morris dancing at the June Fair in Abingdon around 1910 may have been short lived it came at an important time, providing a link between the old performers and a new generation of dancers.  Important information was collected by the visiting folklorists, and the Hemmings family received the necessary encouragement to keep the tradition going even when regular public performances were not possible.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Keith Chandler who has so generously shared the results of his research into historical accounts of morris dancing in the South Midlands in general and Abingdon in particular.

Jonathan Leach

© AAAHS and contributors 2020

References and notes

For most of the first half of the twentieth century, Abingdon’s water supply relied on two gas engines and a pump situated in the basement of the County Hall, now Abingdon County Hall Museum.

At the beginning of the century, Abingdon’s water supply came mainly from wells and springs all over the town. From about 1890, summer rainfall decreased and water shortages occurred as the wells dried up. This shortage also affected firefighting efficiency; although firefighting equipment was getting more sophisticated, adequate water to put out fires was often lacking. Although Abingdon’s waterworks opened at Wootton in 1878 to increase the supply of clean water to the town, the new houses being built along the Oxford and Radley roads, as well as the increase in the addition of baths and flushing toilets and the closure of contaminated wells, meant that ever more water was needed to satisfy the demand.

In 1901, Abingdon’s town council decided that a supplemental water supply was required to cover shortages, and to use the water from the artesian well on The Square for this purpose. However, the flow there in itself was of insufficient pressure to do what was needed and, in order to increase the pressure in the mains, the water was drawn under the High Street to the County Hall, where a Crossley gas engine was installed in the basement of the building to power a J Tylor & Sons pump, installed at the same time.

The safe operation of the engine and pump required an adequate back pressure to be assured even in the event of a leak from the mains. This was provided by a vertical pipe fixed to an outside wall that reached to above the parapet of the building and then turned downwards through a U-bend to connect to the mains. Pumping was carried out as required, a flow gauge providing information as to whether the mains pressure was adequate or not at any given time. The arrangement was so successful and, it was felt, so necessary that in 1906 two new Crossley gas engines were ordered so that, if one engine required maintenance or repair, power could still be supplied by the other.

The newly-installed pair of horizontal gas engines in 1907 with the triple-barrelled pump to the left.
(With thanks to the Abingdon County Hall Museum)

Although the engines were very efficient and performed better and more cheaply than expected, the confined space in which they were housed made for difficult working conditions. The engine drivers, as they were known then, complained of being overcome by heat and fumes when the engines were in use and sometimes had to be carried out for resuscitation.

The engines and pump were last used in 1947. At that point, the well in The Square was fitted with an electric pump and the water went straight from there under pressure into the mains. Then a ring main was laid around Abingdon by the Oxford Water Company and finally Thames Water became the supplier.

Today, after the refurbishment of the County Hall in 2012, the gas engines and the pump are part of the Museum’s displays; to save space, the left and right engines have been transposed, and some of the piping has been shortened. One engine has been adapted to rotate slowly for display purposes using an electric motor but the other is in its original state, having only been cleaned. The whole installation is believed to be unique in that all the components are together in their original location with an unconverted engine.

The installation as displayed in 2012 in the same location. The engines have been transposed and some of the piping shortened, but the pump and the water inlet are in their exact original places.
(Ruth Weinberg 2012)

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

An artist’s impression of the Swift Ditch lock and the Waterturnpike House
(Photo by Mark Johnstone Davies, used by courtesy of the Enviromment Agency)

When the Oxfordshire Coroner, William Johnson, examined the body of David Charteris on 11 October 1787, he was in no doubt about the cause of death. Charteris, an elderly linen trader from Toot Baldon, had been discovered in a ditch on the edge of the Harcourt family’s Nuneham estate with his pockets emptied and ‘his head cut in a most shocking manner’. The cause, Johnson concluded, was that he had been ‘wilfully and feloniously killed and murdered’ by some ‘evil disposed person or persons unknown, not having the fear of God before their eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil’.

The ‘horrid deed’, as Jackson’s Oxford Journal and the Reading Mercury & Oxford Gazette described it that same week, had been committed as Charteris walked home from Abingdon’s annual Michaelmas Fair. Paperwork retained by the local magistrate, Christopher Willoughby (c.1749–1808) of Marsh Baldon, reveals much about the murdered man’s last moments as well as a selective insight into the investigation that followed.

From witness statements, it was deduced that the attack had occurred within a few minutes of Charteris leaving the Waterturnpike public house. This was situated by an old lock (hence the name) on what was then the main navigation channel of the Thames, the Swift Ditch, which enabled boats to by-pass Abingdon. Attention focussed on the obvious likely culprits: other customers in the pub. But as in all the best murder mysteries, the obvious was not the actual, and the tipplers in the Waterturnpike House who had both the most obvious motive and the presumed opportunity that Michaelmas Fair evening turned out also to have convincing alibis.

Indeed, it was nearly two and a half years before any further evidence was forthcoming. But in March 1790, a coincidence of unguarded conversations and an unrelated arrest brought four Abingdon men into the frame, both for the murder and for a string of local thefts. These men were a sack-weaver called Richard Kilby (1764?–?); a Thames bargeman, John Castle (1759?–1790); a labourer, Giles Freeman Covington (1767–91); and a former publican, Charles Evans Shury (1747–90).

Nothing too surprising there: exactly the sort of lowly occupations that one might expect of individuals prepared to kill a vulnerable old man for even the small change in his pocket. But when one looks into the backgrounds of these four Abingdon men, two at least are cast in a rather different light. The registers of Abingdon’s two churches, St Helen’s and St Nicolas (combined with Abingdon Borough’s Poll Rolls, Poor Rate Lists and Minute Books), provide some clues about the personalities of these historical miscreants to set against the one-sided contemporary pronouncements of judges, magistrates and newspapermen. The context in which they lived becomes clearer, some very human pressures and frailties are revealed, and something of their characters and motives can be surmised. And what emerges is rather different from that instinctive assumption of ruthless, avaricious villainy.

In the case of the bargeman John Castle, the very nature of his profession would have been enough for many at the time to make a premature judgement. With a widespread reputation for anti-social behaviour of all kinds, any bargeman would have found it especially difficult to invoke that cornerstone of English law, a presumption of innocence. Indeed, some of the information revealed by Castle rather substantiated the prejudice, as once he had been arrested, he was persuaded to name many other bargemen who were not averse to the odd bit of pilferage from their clients’ cargoes. But then, he also exposed a comparable number of culpable Abingdon householders willing to accept the resultant stolen booty, and the impression grows with every testimony that very few Abingdon citizens of the 1780s were completely free from temptation! Many of Abingdon’s 4,000 population were at least distantly inter-related, after all, at a time when few people found reason to move far from their place of birth, and it is quite possible that the long time it took to advance the initially well-publicised murder can be explained by a conspiracy of silence. It seems unlikely that no-one at all had suspicions based on more than just hearsay, but the common logic of the time was probably that the benefits of revealing a guilty person to the authorities were unlikely to justify the potential retribution of that person’s many nearby friends or relatives.

When one realises Castle’s family situation at the end of 1787, the bargeman stereotype of an incorrigible, unprincipled ruffian seems less likely. When we learn, for instance, that he had been recently widowed, leaving him with three young children to care for, you can see how desperate times might lead a poor man to desperate measures, putting his children ahead of his honesty. But on the other hand, he did appear perhaps to court trouble, marrying in December 1787 Susannah Goodman (1769–?), the teenaged daughter of another noted Abingdon petty-thief and former bargeman, Henry ‘Cherry’ Goodman (1739–1818). Herein lies another reason why, after that silence of well over two years, the case came to resurface at all – the close-knit inter-family relationships of the traditional boating families.

It happened this way. In March 1790, a notorious horse thief, Thomas Davis alias Smith, commonly known as ‘Oxford Tom’, had been hanged at Oxford, but not before, according to Jackson’s, he had made ‘discoveries that may prove beneficial, and by giving every information in his power’. All four of the Abingdon men associated with the murder had had dealings with Oxford Tom at some point, and so all four suddenly had reason to feel distinctly nervous. Carelessly, a few days after the execution, Castle admitted to some fellow bargemen that he knew a thing or two about the Charteris murder. They were moored up in Goring at the time, but in little more than a week the news had spread rapidly via the cabins of boats, busy wharves, noisy waterside bars and bankside homes to reach the ears of the authorities in Oxford 30 miles upstream. Again, the local registers of births, deaths and marriages are enlightening in explaining how such gossip might travel so very swiftly among people who shared not only the same trades, and the same restricted riverine geography, but also, to a large extent, the same genes.

On the face of it, the labourer Giles Freeman Covington also merits little compassion, even though at 19 he was the youngest of the gang at the time of the murder. He fled first to London on learning of Oxford Tom’s confession, and then joined the Navy, remaining by this stratagem at liberty for a further six months. On his capture in January 1791, the newspapers had no intention of waiting for the formality of a trial to designate him ‘an atrocious offender’. So, another iniquitous, poor man, with a vicious streak? No, not when one looks into his family situation; in fact, rather the opposite.

Covington’s father, Roger (1729–98), had moved to Abingdon from London as a young man. There he raised a family, lived a virtuous and industrious life as a tailor, and assumed the prestigious and responsible civic role of Abingdon’s Bellman in 1780. His eldest three sons benefited from local apprenticeships, and rose to become tradesmen of reasonable prominence in Abingdon; Giles, however, rose ultimately only as far as the gallows above the entrance to Oxford Castle! The parish records hint at a sad yet timeless tale of teenage rebelliousness, shaped by the conditions of the time, yet in some ways as familiar as last week.

In December 1787, just two months after the murder, Giles’ illegitimate daughter was baptised, to the absolute horror of his respectable and respected father, no doubt. Giles married the recently-orphaned mother, Ann Gilkes (1768–91), in February 1789; a short-lived son was born in May 1790, while both were in hiding in London (where numerous Covington relatives still abided); their daughter died of smallpox the following August; and then Ann herself died, in September 1791, only a few months after her husband’s execution. Here is the chronology of a behind-the-scenes domestic tragedy which, with the addition of evidence from the trial and Covington’s own testimonies, adds weight to a view of him as imprudent and impetuous, loving and loyal, but hardly ‘atrocious’.

But the most surprising revelation of character comes with the third member of the gang, Charles Evans Shury. The evident ring leader, Shury was not just any old publican at the time of the murder, but a very prominent citizen from an old-established and prosperous Abingdon family. So prominent and prosperous indeed that his older brother John (1745–1804) could count himself amongst the wealthiest men in the town, having inherited his father’s brewery, and then married the only daughter of a wealthy Oxford innkeeper.

The two Shury brothers’ early years show striking similarities, such that by the middle of 1773, while still both in their twenties, and with their father dead, they were both widowers (having both married girls with the same surname of White) with motherless daughters to care for. But that is where the similarities ended. John made another advantageous marriage (to the daughter of John Townsend, a prominent Oxford builder) but Charles wed himself to the bottle, it is safe to assume, as alcohol played a part in every one of the many petty crimes which were eventually attributed to him and his gang. Overall in October 1787, the Shury family owned many substantial properties in Abingdon, and Charles ran The Chequer Inn in East St Helen’s St. The pub was the nerve-centre of a criminal underworld, a place where petty thieves – and some not-so-petty, like Oxford Tom – would gather to drink and plot, and return with their spoils for Shury to dispose of. Hardly your typical 18^th-century footpad, therefore!

The maxim ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ is as selectively true now as it has always been. Certainly it does seem to have paid for Richard Kilby, the fourth of the men implicated by Oxford Tom – all only for thefts, mind you; it was Castle’s loose tongue which revived the authorities’ interest in the murder, and it was Kilby who sealed the fate of the other three by turning King’s evidence at their trials. In return he was given a new start in a new county. Of all the main characters in this tale, it is Kilby alone who eludes positive identification in the parish registers, partly because there were several men of this name alive at the time, but also perhaps because it is the hallmark of the accomplished informer to leave few traces!

The ‘final exit of Shury and Castle’, in contrast, was very public. Both were hanged in July 1790 above the main gateway into Oxford Castle Gaol. Here the bodies could be exposed to maximum view before being delivered to the ever-keen scalpels of the Oxford University Anatomy School, as the law ordained. A few years earlier and the event would not have been nearly so public. Before 1787, the dilapidated nature of the Castle walls meant the gallows were of necessity placed on the ground. The result was that many executions had a tendency to conclude with the authorities and the relations of the deceased engaged in unseemly and often violent disputes over the corpse. At 33 feet above the ground, the bodies of Shury and Castle inspired no such affray, nor did that of Covington when the judge inevitably chose to believe Kilby’s version of events rather than the young seaman’s in March 1791.

Much credit for this more dignified mode of public execution was due to the youthful governor of Oxford Castle Gaol, Daniel Harris (c.1761–1840). The multiple talents of this intriguingly atypical 18^th-century jailer had a bearing not just on the Charteris case but on some of the most significant aspects of Oxford’s broader social and economic development at the time. His skills as a builder facilitated the complete rebuilding of the prison during his tenure as governor (to 1809); he was regularly contracted to undertake a variety of tasks – including the most challenging of all, that of building locks – along a sizeable stretch of the River Thames; and he supervised the completion of the brand new Oxford Canal and the construction of its terminal wharves and warehouses and another lock, using convict labour for all. It is therefore probable that these waterways connections made him the ideal man to act on the incriminatory ‘towpath telegraph’ which John Castle had so imprudently set in motion.

So, crime may just have paid for Kilby, even if it put paid to his former comrades. Yet while his life was spared, he remains a shadowy figure in the story just related, while the others, in death, gained a kind of immortality. There are very few descriptions of ‘ordinary’ people from the past, and those there are tend to be of criminals. Giles Covington, for instance, looked like this in 1790:

five feet nine inches high, very stout and well made, flaxen hair, pale complexion, light grey eyes, long visage, large, long nose, remarkably gruff in speech, mostly wears a blue coat with white metal buttons, white linen waistcoat, brown corduroy breeches, walks very upright, rather swaggering in his gait.

For this description of Covington to have survived is especially poignant, because he survives physically too, in a way. Normally, once the anatomists had completed their work, the remains were returned to be interred within the Castle precincts. This explains the careless arrangement of the skeletons which were discovered during the recent conversion of the site into a hotel, restaurants and heritage complex. It is feasible that John Castle and Charles Shury are among them; Covington definitely is not, as his skeleton remained in public view at the Museum of Oxford, until its recent downsizing.

While it is a subject of debate whether the remains of an identifiable individual should indeed be put on public view, it is perhaps justified in the sense of giving Covington a perpetual means of proclaiming the innocence that he (and the others) always maintained – in a plausibly convincing manner, indeed.

Certainly none of them would have been convicted under modern standards of justice – the man on whose evidence they were executed could easily have been equally, if not more, guilty, after all – and the Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder leaves the impression of a case of 18^th-century justice being seen to be done, rather than actually being done.

Mark Johnstone Davies

The source for this article is Mark Davies, The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder (Oxford, Towpath Press, 2008). For further information, see www.oxfordwaterwalks.co.uk.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

To get a rough equivalent in today’s values of the costs mentioned in this article, use http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result

An adequate and pure water supply is probably the basis for every human settlement and Abingdon is no exception.  As well as the rivers Thames, Ock, and Stert and the Larkhill streams flowing through the town, numerous springs used to arise to the north of the town centre, commemorated today in the names of some of the thoroughfares, such as Spring Road, Spring Gardens and Springfield Drive.

As the town’s population and industry increased through the ages, dug wells provided supplies for public use, for individual houses and for commercial premises.

Finally it was both population pressure and a better understanding of water borne infections that pushed the authorities to find more water supplies. An estimate for the population of the town in 1600 puts it at between 2000 and 2500.[1] It had increased to about 4500 by 1800 and by 1850 it reached about 6250. It was this last increase that started to put pressure on the local water sources. The growth was slower during the second half of the nineteenth century − the population in 1900 was about 6700 – but increased again during the following fifty years to reach about 10,900 by 1950.[2]

Water used to be required for needs which are not a consideration today, such as watering the streets to lay the dust, for drinking fountains for animals and for ornamental fountains – “a continual source of undue and useless consumption”.[3]

Dustlaying cart. A cart like this could hold 270 gallons and took seven minutes to fill from the well in The Square. Before streets were tarred this was an important use of water for towns,. In Abingdon from 1906 to 1916 Akonia, a mix of chlorides of calcium and sodium, was added to reduce water consumption.(© Image courtesy of the Museum of East Anglian Life.)

An inadequate supply of water often meant that fires caused greater damage than they need have done, but it wasn’t until 1870 that the Council decreed “a committee be appointed to make arrangements for custody and management of Fire Engines and Escape and also to inspect the public wells with power to put them in order so as to secure a sufficient supply of Water in case of fire”.[4] As late as 1879 (some eighteen months before Abingdon’s new waterworks began supplying the town) the artesian well in The Square could not provide the Volunteer Fire Brigade with enough water to fight a disastrous fire in Ock Street and twenty ‘pumpers’ had to augment the supply with buckets of water carried from other sources.[5] In 1882 a manhole was constructed in Stert Street to give access to water from the conduited River Stert for firefighting.[6]

The fire engines and the Volunteer Fire Brigade in the Old Fire Station Yard in 1900.  Note the standpipe. The area in the photograph is now the garden outside the Old Guildhall in Bridge Street where the location of the standpipe, now a fire hydrant, is shown by a yellow cover set into the grass. (© Courtesy of Abingdon County Hall Museum)

Until 1880, when Abingdon’s original waterworks was completed, the town relied on very local sources of water. The sketch below shows the main features of the local geology: a sandwich of impermeable clays, the Kimmeridge (9-10 feet thick, about 3 meters) on top and the Oxford (600 feet thick, about 180 meters) beneath, with a filling of the permeable, water-bearing Corallian formation (30-40 feet thick, about 11 meters) between them.

(We thank Philip Powell for providing the original sketch for this diagram.)

The Corallian formation is a sequence of sands, silts and sandstone overlain by limestones, with Coral Rag at the top; the sandy beds form a very effective bacteriological filter provided there is enough time for water to stay within them.

This layer is saturated with the rainwater that falls on an outcrop north of the town and, because there is a slight slope towards the south-east, the water can be tapped by artesian wells in Abingdon. The head of pressure in the town centre was demonstrated by the artesian well in The Square. In the late 1950s it was still possible to balance three ping‑pong balls on the fountain of water that rose above street level.[7]

Lying above the clay sandwich, mostly in the northern part of the town, are shallow gravel deposits (8-20 feet thick, about 2.5-6 meters) laid down by the Thames during the last several thousand years.  They too can store water which is trapped by the underlying impermeable Kimmeridge Clay. Shallow wells could be sunk into the gravel and springs, now dry, once emerged where the gravel abuts the clay to the north of the town centre.[8]

There is evidence of some early schemes to manage the rivers and the water supply. Abingdon Abbey used the Stert to mark the eastern, northern and western boundaries of the Abbey precinct, and it modified or created a channel of the Thames to run its mills.[9]

The Conduit House on what is now Park Road at the eastern edge of Albert Park had belonged to the Abbey. It is not known when it was built – the fifteenth century has been suggested – but it was known to Amyce in 1554 and was on a farm owned by the Abbey.[10] It sheltered a cistern that was fed by at least one local spring.

The Conduit House in 2012(© Michael Harrison 2012)

Though there is no trace of the original conduit today, the water must have been used in the town, probably by the Abbey but perhaps also supplied to the wealthier citizens. In his article on water management in the urban monastery, Bond comments that “Urban communities… found it especially difficult to preserve unpolluted sources of drinking water nearby, and were frequently driven to bringing in a piped supply from distant springs.”[11]

There is no record of what use was made of water from the Conduit House from the dissolution of the Abbey in 1538 until 1719 when, with the support of the Corporation, Richard Ely, a leading townsman, erected a new fountain in Ock Street which was fed by water from the Conduit House cistern. The Carswell, as it is known, is a semi-circular recessed niche in brickwork that originally held a tin‑coated copper basin. It was in use until 1874 when the construction of the new main drainage scheme for the town dried up the streams that fed the cistern. In 1947 the fountain was moved from Ock Street to Conduit Road where it can still be seen set into the wall of Tomkins’ Almshouses.[12]

The Carswell in its original position in Ock Street in 1941. It was subsequently moved to the wall of Tomkins Almshouses in Conduit Road and is no longer connected to a water supply.(© With thanks to the Berkshire Archaeological Society. A E Preston, ‘The Carswell (or Castlewell), Ock Street, Abingdon’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal, vol. 45 part 1 (1941), pp. 37-44)

There are references in documents from the mid-thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries to boundaries along a watercourse called Carswell to the north of Ock Street (‘carse’ is an obsolete name for cress). The stream must have been a well-known landmark, and water from springs in what is now Albert Park would have been used in that part of town for a long time.[13]

Another early scheme to boost the water supply was made by Thomas Piccard, a goldsmith, who leased ground in Stert Street from the Borough Corporation in 1696 to build a “fair cistern, fountaine or conduit from thence to convey water by pipes in all the principal streets and lanes of the said Borough to the end that the inhabitants might at easy rates be furnished with river water in their houses on all occasions and might be supplied with a present remedy in case of any accidental or calamitous fire…” the water to be taken from the Thames.[14]  Thomas Knapp took first a half- share and, later the whole lease, in the enterprise. In 1697, Christ’s Hospital granted Knapp and Piccard a new lease for twenty-one years of what is now Nag’s Head Island by Abingdon Bridge, where they built an engine house that acted as a pumping station. They were also given “liberty to lay water pipes upon or through the Bridge for the water to run and pass from the engine house into the Borough”.[15] Little is known about the success of the scheme, although the lease continued until 1819 when the bridge was widened. The engine-house was last recorded in 1837, but may not by then have been supplying the town.[16]

Wells were important until water was universally available through a mains supply and were still in use into the twentieth century. A number of the wells in use in the town in the 1870s, by then fitted with pumps, are shown by the scattering of ‘P’ symbols in the first edition 25‑inch OS map.

Town water pump at Twickenham House in the private passage at the side of the house. (© Ruth Weinberg) 2014)

Advertisement for a similar pump in 1859.
(With thanks to Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History:
 https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:lm1859v7-JTy.jpg accessed 17 February 2018)

A few wells have survived into recent times and were known in houses at 3 Stert Street, 13-15 Bath Street and 48 West St Helen Street, and in the basement of 4 East St Helen Street, there is a stone-lined well which still contains water. Wells often narrowed towards the bottom to prevent damage to the buckets on the way up or down.

Well at 3 Stert Street
This photo was taken during the excavation of this well in 1970, prior to its being filled in and covered by an extension to the house. The description reads “A covered well under the garden was 11ft deep  [about 3.4 m] and built of local stone on an open square box of four timbers, 3ft long [about 0.9 m] and 6 ins [about 15 cm] square in section.”(© From AAAHS photograph collection. Copyright owner unidentified.)

The poor suffered real difficulties getting water. For example, in the eighteenth century the inmates of the neighbouring almshouses used the slipway to the Thames at the end of East St Helen Street as a ‘watering place’.[18] This was later the place where elephants were taken to drink when the circus came to town.

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, scientific discoveries were changing many aspects of people’s lives and making them safer. Water was a particular example: the link between polluted water and cholera, for instance, had been discovered by John Snow’s work looking at the incidence of the disease in the East End of London in 1855. [19]   Consequently there was a greater awareness of the health hazards posed by contaminated water. Between 1873 and 1879, fifty-one water samples from Abingdon were sent for testing to the newly-appointed Medical Officer of Health and forty-seven were found to be “unfit for domestic use”.[20] The contaminated wells were closed, causing problems for the affected households.

A decade later, in 1885, the routine bacteriological examination of water was introduced in London after Theodore Escherisch had identified the bacilli that were named Escherichia coli and which can cause a range of diseases. Testing for these bacilli became a criterion by which routine water samples could be judged.

The MG works and the Pavlova Leather Works, both to the north of Marcham Road, had wells in their grounds and there were six wells in the area to the south of Ock Street that housed the Morland Brewery. There is also an artesian well beneath The Square by the war memorial that becomes very important later in this story. It is known that the Morland wells and the well in The Square were drilled into the Coralian formation and were about 20 m deep.[21]

Public health became a national issue from the mid-nineteenth century and key public health acts were passed in 1848, 1866, 1872 and 1875.[22]  The 1848 act was permissive only, but the subsequent acts imposed duties on local councils. Under the 1866 Sanitary Act, Abingdon Borough Council was obliged to take on the responsibility for water supply together with other duties that included dealing with hazards to health (nuisances), street cleaning, and providing sewers. It was given the duties of a sanitary authority under the 1872 act and became part of the Berkshire Combined Sanitary District which employed its first Medical Officer of Health (MoH) in 1873. The 1875 act consolidated the earlier public health acts. Details of how the Council carried out all these new duties are contained in its minute books and other records.

Following the 1866 act the Council’s immediate public health priority was providing a sewage system, but in 1874 it started to plan for a water supply that would meet the needs of the growing town. Four years later, it decided on the construction of a waterworks some three miles north of the town in the neighbouring parish of Wootton.[23] This opened in 1880 at a cost of £9000 but it provided sufficient water for only ten years.

The long series of summer droughts that began in 1890 also saw the start of a continuing hunt for ever more water until the Oxford Water Company ran a main to the town in the 1950s.[24] The droughts also led to a drop in the quality of the water that fed Abingdon’s springs and wells because the water was not always adequately filtered and purified in the sands and gravels that held it.

The need for water became so acute that, in March 1897, the Borough Council considered “a motion for the employment of a Waterfinder with the aid of a divining rod, before proceeding further with the Water Works at Wootton”.[25] Only two councillors voted for this and the work to enlarge the underground reservoir at Wootton went ahead.

The needs for water increased. As well as for drinking and the flushing of the sewers and of the new toilets, which often leaked water continuously, many Victorian middle-class houses were now being built with baths.[26] By 1882, it was possible for E. Bailey-Denton, an eminent water engineer whose firm was involved in the building of the water works, to write “It is now generally acknowledged that a dwelling cannot be considered as complete without a bathroom and that its adoption should not be limited to the superior mansions of the wealthy, but that all classes of the population should have it within their power to benefit by the comfort, cleanliness and healthfulness afforded by both hot and cold baths”.[27] It wasn’t long before these were considered to be essential and the boarding schools in Abingdon, built with baths, complained bitterly when their pupils were unable to bathe because the water supply was inadequate.

Meters had been installed to help prevent wastage, and the then borough surveyor, George Winship, presented a paper at the district meeting in Nottingham of the Association of Municipal & Sanitary Engineers & Surveyors detailing how these had worked to date.[28] It appears that not all the participants agreed with his assessment, but Winship maintained that the meters enabled the detection of water leakages that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. He also cited the difficulty of assessing costs for water if it was to be paid for through the rates when some households used only mains water while others still used well water for many purposes. He had also found that “consumers of water by meter take care to have better fittings”.

He had earlier reported “In some instances, meters are purchased and fixed at considerable expense, diagrams are obtained at stated periods, whilst few steps are taken to rectify the defects which the meters are constantly indicating. The meter system is then condemned as useless; whereas, in most of the cases, the men in charge are really to blame, and they endeavour to hide their shortcomings under a condemnation of the system”.[29]

A Tylor & Son water meter advertised in 1880These were the meters of choice when the Council first installed meters. They were enclosed in a metal box just outside a consumer’s premises.
(With thanks to Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/J._Tylor_and_Sons  accessed 17 February 2018)

From September 1880, water was supplied by the Council to both domestic and trade customers. Consumers had to apply to be connected and the supply was by meter only, with the express purpose of preventing waste. Originally, the price charged was one shilling per thousand gallons (about 4.5 cubic meters); after a year, this was raised by fifty percent for consumers outside the borough limits who paid an extra sixpence. Payments were collected on the traditional quarter days, Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas and Christmas Day.

All this had necessitated the building of water mains and the Borough Surveyor’s Report Book details many of them.[30] The water main in the High Street was laid in 1902.[31] The meters were supplied by J. Tylor & Sons, hydraulic and sanitary engineers who also supplied other specialised equipment used in providing mains water in Abingdon. They were in cast iron boxes with moveable covers “near to the confines of the properties of consumers” and connected to the mains with a lead piping. The meters were tested from time to time.[32] There was a sliding scale of charges for renting the meters, depending on the capacity. The “authority laid the service-pipe to within 1 foot of the confines of the private property without charge; and all meters were fixed under the public highways and were, therefore, always accessible”.[33]

In order to be connected to the mains water supply, potential customers had to complete an application form, obtained from and returned to the borough surveyor’s office. There were quite a lot of restrictions regarding the types of piping to be used, the use of cisterns, water closets and urinals and their construction and the use of leakage-proof taps in public water troughs and fountains.

Two regulations bear full quotation:

“14. No communicating or other pipe shall be laid through or into any sewer, ashpit, sink, manure hole or any other place where the water conveyed by such pipe might be liable to draw in foul air through a faulty joint or open tap.”[34]

“20. All parties applying for a supply of water, having complied with these requirements, will nevertheless understand that the authority hold themselves free from any liability for damages that may in any way arise in houses or premises by the bursting of pipes or the overflowing of cisterns by reason of frost or any other cause.”[35]

Finally, the purchaser promised not to hold the sanitary authority responsible for not keeping the pipes fully charged with water. Caveat emptor!

In 1891, a time when water engineers increasingly considered that their work included protecting the sources of their water supplies from pollution, George Winship was able to report on the benefits of creating  a supply of clean water.[36] In Abingdon’s case, “in the seven years prior to the establishment of the waterworks, the average death rate was 21.43 per 1,000 from all causes, and from the chief zymotic [infectious] diseases, 2.71 per 1,000. Taking the seven years after the establishment of the waterworks, the average death rate from all causes was 17.7 and 1.5 from zymotic diseases.”[37] Quite a dramatic improvement!

There are many references in the borough minutes to wells being closed on the orders of Dr Woodforde, the Medical Officer of Health. In September 1898, the Council ordered that “a notice be issued cautioning persons against using well water until it has first been boiled”.[38] The Abingdon Herald commented that “Dr Woodforde fears ‘Death in the pump’ but good use of household pumps would alleviate waste”.[39] After yet another four years of inadequate summer rainfall, the same paper asked why the Council didn’t ask householders to “Stick to your pumps for all purposes except drinking and flushing”.[40]

In 1901 Dr Woodforde had recommended that private wells on light soils should be abandoned: “impurities percolate with such rapidity that a sample found to be satisfactory one day might on analysis be condemned a short time afterwards.”[41]  This was not a popular option as municipal water had to be paid for.

The Borough Surveyor’s Report Books give a monthly account of the level of water in the Wootton reservoir.  By 1901, it was clear that more water was required and in October, at the suggestion of the mayor, a small committee was set up to “consider the question of the Water Supply for the Borough.” [42] In January 1902, the borough surveyor presented a report to the Council on the current situation with the water supply. He considered the artesian well in The Square, sometimes referred to as “The Boring”, to be a potentially important source of water.   Running piping from The Square under the High Street to a pumping station in the basement of the County Hall in the Market Place would be (at £246) the cheapest way to use the well in The Square to increase the water supply to the town, and it was “unanimously resolved to adopt the County Hall scheme.”[43]

By 1902, domestic and commercial annual consumption was estimated to be 14½ million gallons (about 66,000 cubic meters) and to have risen by 2½ million gallons (about 11,400 cubic meters) since 1897, in addition to which the Council used “ten or eleven million gallons a year (say about 50,000 cubic meters) or for public purposes” including flushing sewers  and dust laying.[44] The rise in water usage continued in the following years. According to the meter measurements in August 1903, people in metered households were using only 4 gallons per head per day, about 18 litres, and this was considered too low to be sanitary. In 1892 it was being suggested that a reasonable consumption would be 10 to 25 gallons per head per day (about 45 to 110 litres) depending on the individual circumstances, with less being needed in rural areas than in towns.[45]  (According to Thames Water, average national water usage per head per day in 2014 was 35 gallons or 163 litres.[46])

The supplemental supply from The Square was not used continuously, which caused problems: “complaints as to the quality of the water have been received from the houses at the Bath Street end of Park Road. I am inclined to think it arises from the stagnation of the water at this point after pumping ceases at the County Hall about 11pm. I propose to flush the pipes for a week in the early morning and record the difference in the samples”.[47] In May 1909 St. Helen’s School complained about the meagre supply. In response they were assured “Arrangements in the pumping at County Hall that have been made will it is anticipated prevent any further complaint”.[48]

Location of the well or boring in The Square, just south of the War Memorial. (© Ruth Weinberg 2013)

During the First World War a continual water supply to the town was considered so important that E G McIntyre, who worked for the Town Council, was exempted from war service so that he could check the water level at the reservoir. He cycled the three miles each way each day to the waterworks and received 1s 6d for every visit.[49]

Demand kept increasing and in 1914, 1929 and again in the 1930s, the waterworks were further extended. On 6 November 1919, the Wotton reservoir was reported empty “with the result that schools and houses in the upper part of the Town [were] without water.”[50] The surveyor was instructed to acquire a 10 h.p. engine for permanent use at the waterworks. Instructions were given “to pump all and every night from the Boring in The Square into the main leading to the higher level main in the Town and to make immediate arrangements to pump from the new Shaft at Wootton”.[51] This new shaft had been sunk at Wootton especially to meet an emergency of this sort but sand in the pipes was a continual problem and the waterworks engine was not powerful enough to pump a water and sand mix through into the reservoir.

The Reverend E.C. Spicer of New College, Oxford, the consultant geologist who advised the Council on the question of the water supply, “strongly advised” that an attempt be made to obtain an auxiliary supply from the greensand at Foxcombe Hill and, in July 1923, a water main was extended along Radley Road. The sum of £186 10s (£186.50) was allocated for an auxiliary supply from the boring of Cox & Co. with an agreement to take all the water they could spare for five years at an annual cost of £25. [52]

However, the complaints kept coming: “…suggested that the water mains have not been recently flushed and complaint is made more especially to the water round the Park. …With regard to this matter, I would point out that since the Michaelmas Fair, it has not been possible on account of the diminished supply to mix the water from the Wootton supply with that from the boring at the Square and the greater quantity of iron contained in the latter water is I consider chiefly responsible for the deposit, discolouration and flavour complained of”.[53]

By 1926, the water supply was deemed “ample to meet the needs of the Borough”.[54] However, in 1928, two new boreholes were sunk at Wootton, at a cost of £500-£600 and another at Lashford Lane, about a mile west of Wootton, the Lashford Lane bore hole being considered so urgent that work went ahead without approval from the Ministry of Health for the necessary loan.[55]

There was another scare in 1928, when the Air Ministry wanted water to be supplied to the two new aerodromes being built at Abingdon and Harwell, but they finally sunk boreholes on the sites themselves.[56]  The Council must have breathed a huge sigh of relief on receiving that news!

No respite. In 1933, with still more water being required, the Council purchased a further 4.55 acres at Lashford Lane from a reluctant Merton College,  and a tank containing 100,000 gallons (about 450 cubic meters) was constructed there.[57]

On 19 July 1939 it was reported that the pumps under the County Hall had been repaired.[58] They were needed, intermittently, throughout the 1939-45 war. A survey was carried out in 1940 to record any wells on private premises in the town for possible use in an emergency.[59] The public was to be told by loudspeaker vans how water would be distributed and what steps to take to avoid contamination in the event of any such emergency.[60]

During the Second World War it was George McIntyre (a nephew of the E G McIntyre who had carried out the same duty during the First World War) who used to cycle the three miles to the waterworks every day to ensure that the syphon from the reservoir to the main supply to the town was charged and functioning.[61]

In 1943, even with the outcome of the war still in the balance, the Town & Planning Committee were already debating the site of post-war housing with the resulting need to find further sources of water supply and to include possible softening and pressure improvement.[62]

Demand for water continued to increase. By October 1946, Abingdon was receiving 55,000 gallons (about 250 cubic meters) per day from Oxford City Council in addition to the 120,000 gallons (about 550 cubic meters) per day from Lashford Lane and Wootton. In February 1948 the Council tried giving up the struggle for water altogether. It asked for bulk water supplies from Oxford City Council and was negotiating with them for the complete transfer of the whole water undertaking as soon as possible.[63]

By the early 1950s the supply was being supplemented via a new water main to Abingdon laid by Oxford City Council. [64] Oxford already had a number of reservoirs on the higher ground just outside the city; the first stage of its biggest reservoir at Farmoor would be completed in 1962.[65] Many miles of mains were laid from these reservoirs to distributor mains in Abingdon that were also used for the borough’s own water supply.  In the eighty or so years since the opening of Abingdon’s waterworks in 1880 the annual demand for water had tripled from around 50 million gallons a year to around 160 million (about 225,000 to 700,000 cubic meters).

Although the well on the Square was re-opened in 1958-59 because of drought, and ping‑pong balls could still be balanced on the resulting surge, plans were underway for an Oxfordshire Water Board. [66] Attached to the proposals were sets of statistics about the areas to be included. [67]The figures for Abingdon in 1958-59 make interesting reading: produced in own works 73,000,000 gallons (about 330,000 cubic meters); purchased 85,519,000 gallons (about 390,000 cubic meters); total consumption 158,519,000 gallons (about 720,000 cubic meters).

The cost of the supply from Oxford was of concern. In 1959: “We are pleased to report that the booster bore-hole supply on The Square was brought into operation on the 7^th September and is producing a minimum of 80,000 gallons of water per day”.[68] Prior to re-opening, however, the bore-hole had been standing for some years and as a consequence, fine sand had collected; although pumping at The Square continued at least until September 1962 at the rate of 50,000 gallons (about 225 cubic meters) a day maximum amounts could not be raised because of the problem of the raising of sand at higher pumping rates. [69]

The capped wellhead in a cavity under The Square, now gently rusting.(©Ruth Weinberg 2013 and with thanks to Abingdon Borough Council.)

The Oxfordshire and District Water Board, amalgamating all the local undertakings including Abingdon’s, finally came into being in 1967. It later merged into Southern Water and then Thames Water. Although Thames Water initially took over the site of the waterworks at Wootton that had been used in the past to supply Abingdon, the company never used it, and sold it in 1995.[70]

In the endnotes ACTA is the abbreviation for Abingdon Town Council Archives.