15th Century – 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

Abingdon Bridge, Bridge Street

Abingdon Bridge was built in 1416 by local town initiative, not by the Abbey. A guild named the Fraternity of the Holy Cross was chartered in 1441 and given responsibility for its upkeep. It is actually three bridges, Hart or Town Bridge (from the ancient White Hart Inn which stood on the site of the present Old Gaol ‘from time immemorial’), Burford (a corruption of Borough Ford) Bridge over the main navigation channel of the Thames, and Maud Hales Bridge, built by the widow of a wealthy local businessman. Long-distance traffic which had previously crossed the river at Wallingford now did so at Abingdon, bringing great economic advantage to the town.

The building was a notable feat of organisation and engineering for the time. The workforce is said to have numbered three hundred, and was kept supplied by the women of Abingdon with bread, cheese, and cooked chicken. There were initially eleven arches, later extended to fourteen, and the project included a causeway on the further side of the river and a second bridge at Culham. After the dissolution of the Holy Cross guild in 1547, responsibility for maintenance devolved on the local charity of Christ’s Hospital, which was relieved of this duty only in 1927.

Major improvements to the bridge began in 1790, but until 1829 it could take only one-way traffic. With the passage of time, the foundations deteriorated and in 1925 an inspecting engineer declared the bridge unsafe and had it closed without warning. For some four years, a temporary wooden structure carried traffic between Nag’s Head Island and the Oxfordshire bank. The damaged arches were rebuilt in concrete but faced with the original stone to retain their medieval appearance, and a wide new navigation arch was created.

Abingdon Bridge is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

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

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

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

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.

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.

3 Stert Street

This house stands on the east side of the street and next door but one to St Nicolas’ Church. It is a double-fronted, timber-framed building dating from about 1470.

The house was built by Abingdon Abbey on land it owned running north from St Nicolas’ between the Abbey wall and the River Stert. The Stert, which flows from north to south, is now in a culvert under the pavement outside the house.

When the building was renovated in the twentieth century, the original overhanging jetty at the front was restored and an extension was added to the back of the old house, making it a hybrid of some historical interest.

At the same time the remains of a wall painting of geometric design were discovered in the north bedroom on the first floor. They can still be seen faintly on the timbers.

For much of its later history the building was a public house, variously called the Golden Cross and the Butchers’ Arms. After the Abbey was dissolved in the sixteenth century, the freehold belonged first to the Crown and then to the Borough Council, until it passed into private ownership in the mid-nineteenth century. The 1921 photograph (above) was taken after it ceased to be a pub; the group in the doorway are members of the Lewis and Higgs families.

It is a private house and not open to the public.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.