Exterior only - Abingdon on Thames Town Council

Abbey Gateway, Abbey Close

The Gateway dates from the late fifteenth century and was the main entrance to Abingdon Abbey. A much-damaged statue of St. Mary, the patron saint of the Abbey, is in a niche above the main archway.

The large central arch was for mounted travellers and wheeled traffic, and the small arch on the north side was for pedestrians. A porter’s lodge, built into the south side, found use in the nineteenth century as the town’s first police station. The lodge was removed in 1865 to provide a second pedestrian arch.

At some point after the Dissolution the rooms above the gateway became the town prison, a use that continued until the Old Gaol took over this function in 1812. In 1826 this space was converted into a room for banquets and receptions, and is now a meeting room.

The Gateway is flanked by St Nicolas’ Church on the north and the former St John’s Hospital (now part of the Guildhall) on the south. The church was intended for Abbey tenants and servants. The hospital was an infirmary for the Abbey servants and also catered for sick and needy travellers.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Barton Court - ruins from the south in 2016

Barton Court (remains of) Sherwood Avenue

Hidden away in a modern housing estate just outside the town centre is the ruin of Barton (often referred to as Barton Court).

The ruined Barton House (or Barton Court) is now surrounded by the houses of Sherwood Avenue, behind Audlett Drive. (Postcode for satnav: OX14 3NL; National Grid Reference: SU 504 974. Map data: Google, Infoterra Ltd & Bluesky)

This is all that remains of a house built in 1554 by Thomas Reade, using stone from the tower of Abingdon Abbey’s church. The manor of Barton had been granted to the Abbey at an early date. It covered a large area around Abingdon, and Barton was the ‘home farm’ of the Abbey. After the Dissolution, the manor passed by purchase to Thomas Reade. His grandson, Sir Thomas Reade, entertained King Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria at Barton several times.

The family took the Royalist side in the English Civil War, and Barton saw the final parting of Charles and Henrietta Maria in April 1644. Abingdon fell to the Parliamentarians in May 1644. It is unclear if the house was reduced to a ruin at that time, or if it survived until March 1646 when Barton provided cover for an (unsuccessful) attack on Abingdon by Royalist troops from Oxford.

The surviving ruin is hard to interpret, but it includes a chimney breast with three fireplaces, and holes in the walls which would have held joists for floors and a staircase. The building had at least three storeys. A photograph of 1898 shows what seems to be a fine stone chimney stack above one of the fireplaces, but this has now fallen. Some rather unsympathetic repairs to the ruin were carried out in about 2002.

Excavations were carried out here by a group from Fitzharrys School in the 1960s. Finds included a coin of Charles I and much decorated ceiling plaster of probably early seventeenth century date. Some of this plaster is now on display in Abingdon Museum. Cannon balls have also been found at the site.

At some point after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a new house (now demolished) was built, just to the south of the ruin. By about 1900, it was known as Barton Court. It is possible that, when this new house was built, the ruin which we see today was deliberately left standing: a poignant reminder of the dramatic events which took place at Barton during the English Civil War, and of the role which the Reade family had played in them.

Roger Thomas

© AAAHS and contributors 2017

The rear façade of Brick Alley on St Helen’s Wharf and facing the river

Brick Alley Almshouses, St Helen’s Churchyard

Brick Alley is the name of the almshouses facing into St Helen’s churchyard along its south side. The rear is on St Helen’s Wharf and looks on the river. When Geoffrey Barbour, one of the men who organised the building of Abingdon Bridge, died in 1417, he left money for the foundation of an almshouse on or close to this position. In 1554, it was described as consisting of a hall and twelve chambers that sheltered ‘twenty poore creatures’ who lived by charity. By the eighteenth century it was dilapidated. The Abingdon charity Christ’s Hospital took it over, demolished it, and built the present Brick Alley in 1718-1720. It had to pay a five-shilling fee to the bishop for permission to build on the edge of the churchyard. The construction was entrusted to two local master craftsmen, Samuel Westbrook for the structure, and Charles Etty for the woodwork.

Rear façade of Brick Alley, about 1885By permission of the Master and Governors of Christ’s Hospital

While Twitty’s Almshouses, which had been built only a decade or so earlier on the opposite side of St Helen’s Churchyard, differ little in their general layout from the fifteenth-century Long Alley almshouses on the west side of the churchyard, Brick Alley is self-consciously ‘modern’ and must have been intended as a prestige project. It has an upper floor and, on the churchyard frontage, a central pedimented staircase turret. The churchyard façade and the two end walls are in fine chequered brickwork. Access to the individual apartments was (and is) from a ground floor passage and an upper gallery on the churchyard frontage, both enclosed within six tall arches, three on each side of the staircase turret. The gallery has decorative balustrades within the arches.

There is a two-storey annexe on the eastern end which is generally of much lower quality. The rather awkward roof join shows that it was built after the main structure, and it is probably the wash house that was reported as being provided for the inmates in 1884. Its windows echo the curve of the arches.

Several writers have assumed from the churchyard façade that the building was intended for twelve inmates, but the rear façade shows nine windows on each floor, thus nine rooms, and in fact there were from the start eighteen residents. The rear side of the building will have faced on to a busy industrial wharf, and is much simpler; it is of roughly coursed rubble stone with brick in the quoins and window-surrounds. In the original plan, the nine front doors on each floor of the churchyard frontage were arranged symmetrically with two doors in the outer and inner arches and the ninth behind the staircase turret. The building was modernised in the 1950s.

The churchyard frontage of the Brick Alley Almshouses from the east.
The slightly lower annexe on the left is probably the washhouse provided in 1884.© M Harrison 2020

The first inmates, three men and fifteen women, moved into Brick Alley in March 1719. They must have found their new quarters an improvement, but it seems relations with their new patrons were not good. They were not accustomed to the discipline Christ’s Hospital required of them, and had to be threatened in 1720 with the loss of their regular money payments.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013, revised 2020

Conduit House, Park Crescent

At the south-east corner of Albert Park, where Park Road and Park Crescent meet, there stands a small, hexagonal stone building. This is the Conduit House.

This unusual building supplied the needs of the citizens of Ock Street at a time when water from other sources was not safe to drink. It stands in an area of plentiful natural springs which fed a cistern in the building, and the water was led thence downhill via stone channels. Its destination was a fountain in Ock Street.

It is not known when the Conduit House was built. It belonged to Abingdon Abbey at the time of the Abbey’s dissolution in 1538, and then it passed to the Crown. In 1553 it, and the surrounding land, passed to the local charity, Christ’s Hospital. It is mentioned in the Amyce survey of Abingdon of 1554.

In the eighteenth century, this system for supplying relatively clean water to Ock Street was refurbished and provided with a new fountain through the initiative of leading Abingdon townsmen. It was in use until 1875, when a mains water supply was installed for the whole town. The fountain was moved from Ock Street to Conduit Road in the 1940s and it can still be seen in the wall of Tomkins’ Almshouses.

The Conduit House itself is no longer in use.

It is not open to the public.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

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

20 East St Helen Street, Twickenham House

This early Georgian building was built in 1756-7 for Joseph Tomkins. The Tomkins were among the leading families of the town; they were prominent members of the local Baptist Church and successful businessmen in the malt trade and, later, banking.

The house is noted for its splendid brickwork. It has two storeys plus attics with dormer windows, as well as cellars. The front door, framed by an elaborate doorcase, is approached up five stone steps under an iron lamp holder.

Next door to the east are the original stables with a cobbled yard.

The back of the house is if anything more impressive than the front. At the level of the attics there is a large domed lantern with three windows.

Twickenham House, rear view
© Michael Harrison 2013

The building has retained many original internal features, notably the main staircase, doors, doorcases and fire surrounds.

The architect of the house itself is thought to have been Sir Robert Taylor, although it is possible that the stables were built to the design of a local architect.

Stables and cobbled yard, and railings and lamp holder separately listed at grade II* (stables reference no. 1199451; railings reference no. 1048904).

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013 updated 2014

28 East St Helen Street, Unicorn House

No.28 is one of the largest and most impressive houses in East St Helen Street. A building on the plot was identified in Amyce’s 1554 survey but nothing of that building survives today. The primary phase of the present house is from 1616-17. It is on two floors with an attic and cellar and purpose-built for commercial use, possibly as an inn. It probably had four large gables facing the street. It was bought in 1679 by Thomas Medlycott, recorder of Abingdon and future MP, who converted it into a dwelling house, probably removing the gables and putting in sash windows. The name ‘Unicorn House’ is modern. It was thought to have been the name of an inn that Medlycott bought and converted it into a house, but there is no record of a Unicorn Inn on this site.

A plaque commemorates the visit to the house by William of Orange in 1688 on his way to London to claim the English throne.

From the early eighteenth century are the doorcase, dining room panelling and staircase. Later changes have been few – additional panelling in the front hall is probably late nineteenth-century, while documented alterations in 1971 were relatively minor in scope.

The house is private property and not open to the public.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

55 East St Helen Street

No.55 with its neighbour No.51 are part of a timber framed row of rental properties built some time around 1500. They belonged to the Braunche family in the mid-sixteenth century. There were probably three cottages originally, the one to the south demolished in 1732 when No.57 was built.

There seems to have been a radical reconstruction of No.55 in the seventeenth century. A spine beam was inserted to support the first floor and a passage entry with one large room was created on the ground floor. It became the property of Christ’s Hospital and one of the occupants of this rebuilt house was their surgeon, Michael Adshed.

There was another major makeover in the eighteenth century, with the creation of a separate kitchen to the rear and the relocation of the fireplace and staircase. One of the upper floor rooms was given a new fire surround, and panelling was installed.

There have been further changes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to provide extra space in the attic, but very little has been changed since it was sold by Christ’s Hospital in 1922. A notable twentieth-century occupant was Colin Winter, bishop of Damaraland (Namibia) who was exiled from his diocese for his opposition to the apartheid regime in the 1970s.

No.55 is private property and is not open to the public.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

60 East St Helen St, The Malthouse

The present building is largely a reconstruction of the early twentieth century by local architect Harry Redfern (1861-1950) as business premises for lawyer Charles Alfred Pryce. Apart from a fragment of a two-light window with Perpendicular tracery all the openings in the 1895 photograph have been blocked in and all the present openings are modern.

The Malthouse does however include elements of the medieval dyehouse noted in Amyce’s 1554 survey of Abingdon. In the mid-seventeenth century the premises were used for malting, and it is possible that the north wing (noted as a maltings in 1876) dates from this time. The adjacent brick building seems eighteenth-century in date, and at some stage a datestone of 1748 was set into it, probably by the Tomkins family, prominent Baptists and maltsters in Abingdon. In the nineteenth century the Copeland family firm continued the malting business. The remodelling in 1900 is an interesting example of the vernacular revival, with an open hall created where none existed before.

No.60 is currently the offices of West Waddy ADP, architects and town planners.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

Long Alley Almshouses, St Helen’s Churchyard

The Long Alley almshouse is an elegant building, still in use for its original purpose. But it also has great significance for the history of the town of Abingdon.

It was in 1441 that the Fraternity of the Holy Cross, based in St Helen’s Church, gained a royal charter. For the first time, the townsfolk of Abingdon had an institution that was legally incorporated, independent of the Abbey, and able to raise funds for its own purposes. The charter gave them an explicit right to set up an almshouse for thirteen ‘poor sick and impotent men and women’. The Abbey had a monopoly of burials in Abingdon, so St Helen’s Churchyard would be a convenient location for the new almshouse. It was built in 1446-7.

The almshouse is a long low building with a covered walkway in front. Refurbishment in 1605 gave it a handsome panelled central hall for the use of the governors, a central gabled porch, and an off‑centre lantern which has been re-covered from time to time since. The graceful chimneys at the rear are probably also of that period.

The paintings in the porch and on the outside walls are also of 1605 and are by Sampson Strong, an Oxford painter with few artistic pretentions. They include scenes of biblical charity and moralising quotations. On the south wall, facing the river, is a depiction of the old Abingdon market cross, demolished by the Puritans in 1644.

The central hall is usually open on Heritage Days.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.