Abingdon People

You are here: / / Abingdon People
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…
Read more
John Alder, the lucky cooper from Abingdon, holding his winning lottery ticket

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…
Read more
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…
Read more
Virgin and Child(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…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Aelfric of Abingdon

Aelfric of Abingdon, future Archbishop of Canterbury, started his career as a monk of Abingdon Abbey. It was a time when…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Roger Amyce

Roger Amyce was a man of importance in Abingdon in the mid-sixteenth century. In 1547, as a middle-ranking civil servant,…
Read more
george_henry_argyle_tp

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…
Read more
Agnes Baker with Arthur Preston at Whitefield in 1927

Agnes Baker

Agnes Charlotte Baker is one of Abingdon’s foremost historians. For twenty years she worked with Arthur Preston to extract…
Read more
Barrett shop 1984 cropped

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…
Read more
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,…
Read more
Willoughby Bertie (seated) as a composer.

Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon

Willoughby Bertie became fourth Earl of Abingdon on the death of his father, also Willoughby, in 1760 and was made High Steward…
Read more
The Blacknall monument in St Nicolas Church

The Blacknall family

The sixteenth century was a period of economic upheaval which provided great opportunities to the able and ambitious. The…
Read more
William Bostock by Sampson Strong

The Bostock family

The Bostocks were a prominent Abingdon family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are believed to have originated…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

The Bowles Family

The Bowles family was widespread in Berkshire and the branch centred in Longworth and Charney Basset seems to have been affluent.…
Read more
Sir George Bowyer (Cartoon by ‘Spy’)

Sir George Bowyer

At the intersection of the Oxford and Radley roads in Abingdon is a group of buildings – church, cloister, presbytery,…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

The Braunche family

The Braunches were a leading family in Abingdon through several generations. A John Branch (d. 1488) worked from 1438 as…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Mary Buckland, nee Morland

Mary Morland exemplifies the limited possibilities of a woman of her time to make a career in scientific research. She was…
Read more
Agnes Leonora Challenor

Agnes Leonora Challenor

Agnes Leonora Challenor, née Duncan, was born in Wales on 19 March 1882, the eldest of eight children. Her parents were…
Read more
Bromley Challenor as mayor 1863-64© Courtesy of Abingdon County Hall Museum

Bromley Challenor

Bromley Challenor was born in 1821 in Teddington, Middlesex. He arrived in Abingdon sometime in the late 1840s having worked…
Read more
John Creemer Clarke

John Creemer Clarke

Although he came to play a significant role in many aspects of Abingdon life, John Creemer Clarke was not a native of the…
Read more
James Cobban

James Macdonald Cobban

James Cobban was headmaster of Abingdon School from 1947 to 1970. He is credited with transforming the school from the rather…
Read more
Oswald Couldrey

Oswald Couldrey

Oswald Jennings Couldrey is Abingdon’s best-known twentieth-century artist. He was born into a local family of seed merchants…
Read more
Charlotte Cox, a Crimean War nurse from Abingdon, when she was in her mid-seventies

Charlotte Cox

Charlotte Cox was one of the 229 women whose names are on the Register of Nurses sent to the Military Hospitals in the East…
Read more
Mieneke - USE THIS VERSION - ed jb 8mar14 - from Elizabeth 7mar14 taken by Elizabeth in 1996

Mieneke Cox

Mieneke Cox was a much loved and highly respected local historian of Abingdon.  She was born Jacomina Elsje Elias in Nijmegen…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

The Coxeter Family

The name of Coxeter still appears in large letters over a few shop fronts in Ock Street, but it was once a major…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

The Dayrell Family

The Dayrells were gentry in Lillingston Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, but a branch of the family became prominent in Abingdon…
Read more
Nathaniel Dodson as a young man.

Nathaniel Dodson

Nathaniel Dodson, who was vicar of St Helen’s for over forty years, was born in 1787 into a clerical family based in Sussex.…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Thomas Duffield

Thomas Duffield, Abingdon’s MP from 1832 to 1844, was born in 1782 at Syston, Lincolnshire, second son of Michael Duffield.…
Read more
St Edmund with infant (Chaource, France)

St Edmund of Abingdon

Edmund of Abingdon, the future scholar, archbishop and saint, was born in about 1175, probably in West St Helen Street, where…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Faricius (Faritius)

Faricius was one of the two greatest abbots of Abingdon Abbey. Aethelwold, a century and a half before him, was the other. Faricius…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Henry Forty

Henry Forty, preacher and occasional religious writer, was the first professional minister to lead the Abingdon Baptist community…
Read more
glyn_700x500

Sir Ralph Glyn

Ralph George Campbell Glyn was probably Abingdon’s longest serving MP, holding the seat from 1924 to 1953. He was born…
Read more
1stviscountharcourt_for_upload

Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt

Simon Harcourt was of a gentry family whose seat was at Stanton Harcourt. He was educated at a dissenting academy at Shilton,…
Read more
Peter Heylyn From Wikimedia; public domain)

Peter Heylyn

Peter Heylyn was one of the great intellectuals of his time and one of its most enthusiastic controversialists. He was equally…
Read more
Sir John Holt, by Philipp Audinet, after van Bleek

Sir John Holt

Sir John Holt, the greatest English lawyer of his age, was chief justice of the court of King’s Bench from 1689 until his…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Sir Thomas Holt

Thomas Holt, lawyer, was born about 1616 at Stoke in Oxfordshire and educated at Magdalen Hall in Oxford. About 1640, he…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Robert Jennings

It is not every schoolmaster who can retire to great wealth and a landed estate, but Robert Jennings, Master of Abingdon…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

George Knapp

The Knapps were a large but close-knit family originating in Chilton, a village between Abingdon and Newbury, where many…
Read more
William Knollys

William Knollys

The Knollys family, based at Rotherfield Greys near Henley, were pre-eminent in Berkshire and Oxfordshire through much of…
Read more
Gabrielle Lambrick

Gabrielle Lambrick

Gabrielle Lambrick (née Jennings) was born in south London, her father a hospital administrator and amateur art connoisseur…
Read more
Footer