Generally open – Abingdon on Thames Town Council

Baptist Church, 35 Ock Street

The Abingdon Baptist community dates from 1650, but it was not until 1700 that a dedicated chapel or meeting house could legally be built. A group of trustees had acquired the land in Ock Street in 1678 from John Combes for £20. Combes was a Baptist preacher who had moved to Longworth in 1656. It has been suggested that an earlier meeting house existed on the site, perhaps built by Combes himself, but there is no evidence for this. The site seems initially to have been purchased as a burial ground.

The 1700 chapel was a little further to the east than the present building, and its entrance was probably on the west side, along a narrow path from the street. That chapel was pulled down in 1841, when the present building replaced it at a cost of £2000. It was financed by the community − according to a local paper “Some of the influential members of the congregation have come forward in the most handsome manner on the occasion.” John Tomkins, of the prominent Tomkins family, is very likely to have been among the main contributors. The new church had a capacity of eight hundred with provision for two hundred more in the vestry. The architect, John Davies, who specialised in Nonconformist churches, used a classical style, in contrast to the Victorian Gothic that was becoming customary at the time for Anglican churches. The builder was a local Baptist, John Chesterman.

The roof was renewed in 1893 and the inside remodelled in 1971 and repaired and renewed in 2018.

During much of the nineteenth century Baptist communities supported non-sectarian education for poorer children. The British School in Abingdon was founded in 1825 by the Baptists with the active support of other dissenting denominations. The Trustees made use of land to the east of the Baptist Chapel to build a house for the schoolmaster that incorporated a school room. A classroom block was built on the street frontage in 1837. The school later expanded further on the same site where it remained until 1902 when the new Board Schools opened in Bostock Road. The school building itself was not demolished until 1960.

This extract from an aerial photograph of Ock Street taken in 1957 has the Baptist Church in the centre with the British School building in front and almost on the street frontage.
(Taken from a photocopy that was given to us. We have not been able to trace a copyright holder.)

The community’s support for education also extended to adults. In 1854, the newly‑founded Mechanics’ Institute was given a space in the school for its reading room. It remained there for three years until it obtained the use of premises in the Clock House on the opposite side of Ock Street.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013, revised 2020

Former Congregational Church, The Square

This self-confident, classical-fronted building on The Square is the former Congregational Church. It marked the prominence of the local Congregational community when it was built in 1862 with seats for six hundred adult worshippers. It was designed by the local architect J S Dodd. The front, with its pediment and giant pilasters, is finished in ashlar stone. The side walls, not visible from the street, are brick.

The original Congregational or Independent meeting house had been built in 1700 as a modest, plain structure on a site hidden behind the street frontage. In 1861 the land immediately in front of the old building was purchased as the site for the new chapel. When this was built, the old meeting house was adapted to become a church annex with a vestry and rooms for Sunday School classes. It is still part of the church building today.

In 1979 the congregation united with Trinity Methodist Church. The Church building remained empty until in 1987 when it was sold and converted into offices. It became a restaurant in 2008.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

The Crown & Thistle, Bridge Street

The Crown & Thistle is a multi-period courtyard inn, probably taking its name from the union of the crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, and bearing the date 1605 over a doorway. Entry is through a cobbled carriageway into a small attractive courtyard. Around it are function rooms, restaurants, bars, kitchens, former stabling and a barn.

The building has seen many alterations over the years. Comparing the two photographs shows how the windows have been altered at ground and first floor levels, and that the covered pavement to the left of the entrance, allowing people to walk under the upper floors, is a relatively recent innovation.

The courtyard lies over the culverted River Stert, which marked the boundary between Abingdon Abbey (to the east) and the town. Some stabling belonging to the Abbey may have stood where the barn is today.

The inn is on the main road south from the town and so a major route for travellers. It prospered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and evolved piecemeal to expand its accommodation, taking over the adjacent public house, The Old Fighting Cocks, in the nineteenth. Its eighteenth-century innkeeper, James Powell, promoted the Crown & Thistle as a place for auctions, banquets and other events, while also providing services such as those of doctors, dentists and oculists. It was the coaching trade that put the inn on the map – mail coaches arrived in 1794 – but a hundred years later it saw itself as ‘a Family and Commercial Hotel and Railway Posting House’.

John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic and social commentator, made the Crown & Thistle his home for a period in the early 1870s, walking the 7½ miles to Oxford when giving lectures and visiting the university. In the 1930s the American actor Douglas Fairbanks junior had a boat on the Thames and held the Crown & Thistle in high regard as a place to stay.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

County Hall, Market Place

This “exceedingly handsome” building – as John Betjeman described it – was erected between 1678 and 1683, primarily to house the Berkshire Assizes when they were held in Abingdon. Until the nineteenth century it was generally referred to as the Town Hall or the Market Hall, and the name County Hall was adopted only gradually. In 1869 Abingdon ceased to be an assize town but the building continued to be known as the County Hall.

The builder was Christopher Kempster, possibly using a design by Christopher Wren. It replaced a market hall on the same site and is now occupied by the town museum.

The style of architecture is Baroque. The building has three storeys, including the roof space which features eleven dormer windows. On the top there is a lantern bearing a ball and weather vane; the lantern has a balustrade round it. An off-centre stair tower projects from the south face (the back) as far as the top floor, and at ground level there is a flight of stone steps to the cellars. It is also possible to access the cellars by an internal staircase leading from the vestibule and by a lift on the pavement.

The ground floor is an open arcade which was designed to house a market.

The painted internal staircase gives access to all the floors except the cellars.

The first floor comprises a grand salon which is known as the Sessions Hall because it was originally built to function as a courtroom when needed. It now houses a permanent exhibition of items from the history of Abingdon, including a special feature on the MG car works that was located on the western side of the town.

In the attics there is a display of more town treasures and one of the cellars contains two early twentieth century gas pumping engines. The cellars also contain an educational area (the Kempster Room) and a café.

On special local and national occasions the Mayor of Abingdon and other dignitaries throw buns to the crowd in the Market Place from the roof of the building. The origin of this ceremony is unknown but it may date from the coronation of King George IV in 1821.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Guildhall, Bridge Street and Abbey Close

The Guildhall is a complex set of buildings, now linked together. At its heart is the mediaeval L‑shaped Hospital of St John, which has been altered and extended over the years.

One arm of the building runs southwards towards the river. In 1563, this became the schoolroom for John Roysse’s newly established grammar school. Above it at its north end is a room remodelled in 1758-9 with an especially handsome west-facing Venetian window visible from Bridge Street.

The arm which faces St Nicolas’ Church was the hospital chapel. The present upper storey over this was rebuilt in 1731-3 as a council chamber, with the ground floor beneath it a courtroom where the Berkshire assize court sat after 1772. The complex also contained a police station in the nineteenth century.

The open space we see today was a courtyard before a row of buildings along Bridge Street was demolished in 1938. It was entered from the side facing the church through an ornamental gateway dating to 1811 that still remains. In the later nineteenth century, the courtyard housed the town’s fire engines.

In 1958 an external staircase was added at the west end of the building for direct access to the council chamber. The extension eastward beyond the Abbey gateway is from 1966.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

King’s Head and Bell, 10 East St Helen Street

There was an inn on this site before 1554 when it was noted in a survey as The Bell. Its status as a major inn in the Bury or market area of the town is shown by the high rent paid by the lessee of the time, John Whitewell.

It seems to have been in the eighteenth century that the King’s Head was first added to its name. This may have been an attempt to connect the property with Charles I. Charles certainly made visits to Abingdon before and during the Civil War, but there is no direct evidence of his presence at The Bell. During the nineteen century the name reverted to The Bell or The Old Bell.

The present structure is mostly eighteenth century with some evidence of seventeenth century work. In 1801 there was stabling for thirty horses; by 1810 stabling for nearly a hundred was claimed. In the nineteenth century the inn supplied horses for the Volunteer Fire Brigade, though the recommendation was to pull the engine by hand if the fire was close by. For accommodation there were three parlours, a large dining room, and twelve sleeping rooms as well as attics above.

In May 1865 the Borough sold the premises to the brewers Carter and Morland who had also bought both the Abbey and Eagle Breweries in the town. The front was remodelled in or shortly before 1907 to its present appearance. The present version of the name, the King’s Head and Bell, probably dates from this remodelling.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

12 Ock Street

The house at 12 Ock Street Is a timber-framed building that has been dated to the late fifteenth century, although it has been altered and extended several times since it was first built.

The early building had twin gables along the street frontage. The higher transverse roof was probably added in the second half of the eighteenth century to increase the height and size of the attics. The early building also had a jetty but the ground floor was later extended underneath it. The present shop front probably dates from the nineteenth century.

A number of early occupiers and their trades are known. They include a shoemaker in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and a ‘Trumpetter’ of the City of Oxford in the time of Charles II. Later occupiers include Victorian shoemakers and plumbers.

By the late nineteenth century the building was being used as a confectioner’s shop, and it then became Bonner’s Refreshment Rooms.

During the twentieth century 12 Ock Street was occupied by a number of different businesses before becoming a cafe or restaurant again early this century.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

The Old Anchor in 2010, with part of the new almshouses just visible on the left.

The Old Anchor, St Helen’s Wharf

The Old Anchor Inn on its present site can be dated to precisely 30 August 1884 when its license was first granted. Prior to this it had operated over the road on a site right on the river that it shared with an almshouse. The original Old Anchor and the almshouse were moved to new sites when Christ’s Hospital, which owned the whole area and still does, redeveloped St Helen’s Wharf in 1884.

The three attached houses that had stood on the present site were remodeled to create the new Old Anchor Inn plus a separate dwelling that was incorporated in the same building. At the rear of the present building, and not accessible to the public, is a seventeenth-century timber-framed range that formed part of the original three houses. The redevelopment also included new almshouses next to the new inn. They replaced an old workshop that was demolished to make way for them.

The present Old Anchor has two doorways. Initially only the right hand door (1 St Helen’s Wharf) led to the public house; the left hand door (No. 2) belonged to the separate dwelling. This was later incorporated into the public house.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.