Feature Articles

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View of Abingdon in about 1805 — engraving by W Byrne after a watercolour by J M W Turner

Abingdon 1805 engraved by Byrne after JMW Turner scan cropped jb T05944_10

Articles about particular aspects of Abingdon’s history

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Historic Ironwork

This article is concerned with ironwork in the public domain that can reliably be assigned to a date before 1900; it is also…
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The Abingdon Morris Tradition 1918 to 2018

In the previous article the story was told of how the Abingdon traditions of morris dancing and electing a Mayor of Ock Street,…
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The Russian Gun

The Russian Cannon in Albert Park in about 1900 with Trinity Church in the background. © From a privately owned Valentine’s…
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Abingdon Morris Dancing and the Mayor of Ock Street before 1914

Summary Abingdon is one of the few towns in the south of England that has an ongoing tradition of morris dancing dating…
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Abingdon Airfield

RAF ABINGDON  For sixty years, from 1932 to 1992, Abingdon Airfield was an important RAF base. Often such installations…
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Abingdon’s Water Supply

Summary Abingdon managed with very local water supplies until 1880, utilising its springs, wells and streams and the rivers…
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Abingdon’s Waterworks

Introduction Abingdon’s water supply in the 1870s was becoming increasingly inadequate as the town’s requirements…
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The Bear Club of Abingdon

In the eighteenth century, a number of prominent people in Abingdon decided to create a club with the object of enjoyment,…
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The Morland Brewery

Summary Until the seventeenth century, brewing was a domestic activity carried out in gentry houses for the inhabitants…
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Abingdon’s Boundaries

Land boundaries are of many types – each created for a different purpose, such as ownership, taxation, ecclesiastical control,…
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The River Stert culvert in Abingdon

Summary The River Stert runs under Abingdon through a culvert – a multi-phase structure in stone and brick, with some…
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Abingdon’s gas engines

For most of the first half of the twentieth century, Abingdon’s water supply relied on two gas engines and a pump situated…
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The Archaeology of Abingdon

Coin image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford The Abingdon area was attractive to human settlers from the earliest…
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The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder

The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder

Photo by Mark Johnstone Davies, used by courtesy of the Enviromment Agency Summary In 1787 an elderly  man, walking…
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Abingdon at War, 1642-1646

Summary The Civil War was the great British calamity of the seventeenth century.  Between 1642 and 1651, a greater proportion…
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