See website – Abingdon on Thames Town Council

Checker, Abingdon Abbey, Checker Walk

The Checker dates from the 1260s and is one of the oldest of the surviving buildings of the great medieval abbey of Abingdon. When built it consisted of one large room at first floor level, heated by a large fireplace, and a vaulted undercroft below. It seems that these did not interconnect. The upper room may have been the office of an important official, the lower, a store-room or wine cellar.

The upper room was divided into two in the early fourteenth century when the tall north-facing windows of this period were inserted. A piece of masonry like a battlement may be a surviving crenellation of the same period, suggesting that the reconstruction was a response to the riots of 1327 and that the two room ‘exchequer’ was a replacement for a building that had been destroyed by the mob. The ‘exchequer’ was probably the Abbey’s counting house or administrative office, and the division into two rooms was possibly to allow receipts and expenditure to be handled separately.

After the Dissolution, it served as a storage area for William Blacknall’s milling business, and later for the brewery that operated in the neighbouring Long Gallery. This use continued until the end of the nineteenth century when it was repaired and opened to the public. In the 1940s it was acquired by the Friends of Abingdon.

It is open to the public during the summer months.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

26 and 26A East St Helen Street

No. 26 East St Helen Street is the most complete surviving medieval house in Abingdon. It was built in 1431 and had two jettied cross-wings that also overhung a central open hall – the smoke from the central hearth blackened the timbers right up to the roof, where it escaped through a louvre.

Behind the right-hand wing (No.26A) is a further extension, built just after the front house, but containing fifteenth-century fireplaces on each floor. The lower room also has a Baltic oak ceiling, while on the walls of the staircase and upper room are remnants of a sixteenth-century decorative scheme with flowers and fruit. There was a similar wing to the north and they were linked by a short gallery behind the hall which has an impressive row of fifteenth-century windows overlooking the garden.

In the nineteenth century the then owner, probably a merchant of some sort, knocked a wide carriageway through the former hall and part of the rear wing, giving it its present odd appearance. Later, the house was divided into four – three parts were known as Ivy Cottages – and was in a poor condition when acquired by Agnes Baker, who restored it in the 1950s. It was bequeathed to the Oxford Preservation Trust in 1991.

It is open to the public by appointment with Oxford Preservation Trust, and on Heritage Open Days.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

30 East St Helen Street, St Ethelwold’s

Behind the elegant Georgian façade of No.30 there is a long sequence of building and adaptation to new requirements. Archaeologists have found evidence for Roman metalworking on the site. Some features in the cellar are possibly thirteenth-century, and its ceiling beams are early sixteenth-century. The long timber-framed range to the rear, however, dates from 1453-4, and has a fine window of this date.

By the sixteenth century, it was probably commercial premises, and a brewery was established here by Thomas Hulcotts in the late seventeenth. The front house was probably built around 1707 for the marriage of Thomas’s daughter, Hannah, to William Hawkins, a rich widower. In the mid-nineteenth century it was Pemberton’s coalyard. Since then the house has been used as an antique shop and a kindergarten. It now belongs to a trust which runs it as seminar space and accommodation for those seeking peace and contemplation.

St Ethelwold’s is regularly open to the public for events such as art exhibitions.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

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.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Long Gallery, Abingdon Abbey, Checker Walk

The Long Gallery is one of the few surviving buildings of the great medieval abbey of Abingdon. Recent tree-ring dating has established it was built in 1455, and the quality of the carpentry shows it was intended as a high status building. The ground floor was probably a stable or store-room, while above were two large heated chambers, with three ante-rooms at the west and a single chamber and staircase at the east. It was probably a guesthouse for visitors as the layout is similar to lodging ranges at other monastic foundations and great houses, with rooms leading off a covered passage. The partitions had been removed before 1547, allowing it the space to be described then as a ‘longe gallery’.

The inscribed portcullis, badge of the Beauforts, on the fireplace lintel opens the possibility that this is where the Earl of Devon or his entourage stayed in 1458 and where he died. The earl was a prominent participant in the Wars of the Roses, and his death was suspiciously sudden.

Following the Dissolution the building was acquired by William Blacknall, a miller, who may have created the domestic apartment (with fireplaces and wall-painting) at the east end, while the rest of the building was used for his business. It was used later for malting and brewing. This use continued until the end of the nineteenth century when it was purchased by the Corporation, repaired and opened to the public. In the 1940s it was acquired by the Friends of Abingdon.

It is open to the public during the summer months.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

35 Ock Street

In the late seventeenth century, many properties in this area were owned by Benjamin Tomkins, a wealthy Baptist. Some time after 1705, what is now 35 Ock Street was occupied by the Reverend William Fuller, the Baptist minister. In his will of 1732, Tomkins left the house to the Baptist community as a permanent home for their ministers. Its neighbour to the east would be rented out to provide for their maintenance.

The core of the house is believed to date from 1652, and is timber framed. The three-storey brick front elevation has sash windows with frames flush with the wall – a practice that was supposed to cease in 1709 for reasons of fire protection – but it is probably somewhat later than this. By the 1980s it had become dilapidated and uninhabitable. A fund-raising campaign was launched, and in 1995 it was fully renovated, with the addition of a new extension at the rear. It is now a Church Centre, with a cafeteria and meeting rooms.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

St Helen’s Church, St Helen’s Wharf

St Helen’s has always been Abingdon’s principal church. It is remarkable for its shape, being much wider than it is long, and even more so for the ceiling paintings in its Lady Chapel, which are of the late fourteenth century and of great artistic importance.

The church was built at the confluence of the rivers Ock and Thames. Although its first mention in written records is in the tenth century, it is likely to have been founded in the late seventh or early eighth century and was probably a Minster or mother church for the surrounding area.

Serious rebuilding began in the early thirteenth century. The church then consisted of a nave and a single aisle with a tower to the north. In 1240 the religious Guild of Our Lady financed the building of the Lady Chapel to the south of the main aisle. In 1391 the Guild commissioned a magnificent painted ceiling for the Lady Chapel, helped by a papal indulgence which promised subscribers a four‑year reduction in their post-mortem stay in purgatory. The ceiling paintings, restored 1983-91, show Old Testament kings and prophets and an exquisite ‘lily crucifixion’, a rare depiction of Christ on a lily.

Three further extensions towards the south were added in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries creating the present church with its central nave flanked by two aisles on each side. The last major extension was the outer south aisle, built in 1539 by a wealthy local widow, Katherine Audlett, who wanted somewhere for herself and her late husband to be buried. There was also a need for more worship space since Abingdon Abbey had been dissolved and its church demolished.

The spire was rebuilt in 1634 and again in the 1880s. A major restoration took place in 1873 and further changes were made when the chancel and some of the roof details were reworked in Victorian Gothic style in 1879. A major re-ordering of the interior took place in 2004.

There are three sets of almshouses in the churchyard, all facing inwards: Long Alley (1446), Twitty’s (1706) and Brick Alley (1718). See separate entries.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

St Michael's from the north-west in 2013

St Michael and All Angels Church, Park Road

St Michael’s was built in 1864-7 on Park Road, just south of the newly created Albert Park. Christ’s Hospital, the main town charity which owned what was then an open field north of Ock Street, had started to develop it for housing.

The new church was built through the efforts of the Reverend Nathaniel Dodson, the indefatigable vicar of St Helen’s and rector of St Nicolas’ from 1824 until a short time before his death in 1867.

The new St Michael’s, which had space for 650 worshippers, was needed to cater for those who lived at the western end of the town and were furthest from the town centre churches of St Helen and St Nicolas. Many of them lived and worked in the crowded courts on Ock Street. St Michael’s would later serve as the local church for the new housing as it developed.

The church was designed by George Gilbert Scott, the most prominent British architect of the time. Scott created a restrained and dignified building. It is in a simple gothic style with a tall west bellcote, and is built of roughly-coursed rubble stone.

Although fundraising for the new church had started in 1860 some funds were still lacking when the structure was completed, and the fittings in place for the consecration service were sparse: second-hand pews, a borrowed harmonium, no fixed lighting, and no heating. It took a combination of donations and the efforts of the congregation over the next few decades to provide lighting, heating, an organ, stained glass, and other fittings including a reredos of 1878 by Edwin Dolby and an altar of 1911 by Harry Redfern, both of them well known local architects. A church room was added in 1968 and there was a major refurbishment and reordering in 2008.

Initially, St Michael’s would have followed the same practices as St Helen’s and St Nicolas’ as it was served by the same clergy, and its baptism registers show that its congregation was largely from the surrounding neighbourhood. Today, and it seems since the 1920s, it is at the high church end of the Anglican spectrum and its congregation comes from all over Abingdon.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

St Nicolas’ Church, Market Place

This church, which stands near the Market Place, is one of the few remaining buildings from the great Benedictine Abbey of St Mary. It was built towards the end of the twelfth century; there is documentary evidence of its existence in 1177. The church provided a place for the Abbey servants and tenants to worship. A notable worshipper was St Edmund of Abingdon while a child. His mother was buried in the church.

In 1327 the south wall was damaged during riots, and during the fifteenth century there were additions, including the bell tower, and changes to the chancel and windows. There was a major restoration by local architect Edwin Dolby in 1880, and the east end was remodelled in 1953 following a fire which damaged the chancel.

In 1372 the church was given its own parish, taking some land from that of St Helen. In 1989 the two parishes were merged into a new Parish of Abingdon with two parish churches, their civil functions having been united in 1894.

In a small chapel to the north of the nave, there is a fine monument to John and Jane Blacknall. A charity which John set up in 1625 still provides funds for the church and for the poor of the parish.

A relieving arch supports the north wall of the nave above a culvert which houses the River Stert running under the church. It discharges into the Thames nearby.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

Trinity Church, Conduit Road

Trinity Church was built in 1873-5 as the new Wesleyan Methodist church. It is on Conduit Road, close to the junction with Park Road and about 160 m east of St Michael’s Church which had recently been built as a daughter church of the parish church of St Helen. Its 38 m Bath stone spire, rising high above St Michael’s simple bellcote, is designed to dominate the view.

An earlier Methodist chapel had been built in 1845 on a narrow site in Ock Street. Thirty years later, the Ock Street chapel and meeting room were too small for the increased congregation but there was no room to expand on the same site. The new Trinity Church had room for a congregation of 600 and its spacious site included separate meeting rooms. John Creemer Clarke, a prominent Methodist layman and local factory owner, is credited with largely financing the church with its meeting rooms and the original manse.

The church is built of roughly-coursed sandstone in an early Gothic style. With its spire, its size and its over-elaborate window tracery, Trinity Church signals the important position in the town that the Methodist community had achieved.

The building was designed by the Reading-based architect W H Woodman.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.