Three years ago Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council moved from Old Abbey House.
The Vale of White Horse District had intended to dispose of the property as surplus to their needs. It did get used for temporary accommodation after their offices in Crowmarsh Gifford burnt down. The Friends of Abingdon sought to postpone the disposal so that a community oriented use might be found, but I have not heard of any news for quite a while.
P.S Thanks to Captain Chaos for the picture of the urns by the Old Abbey House.
In the meantime who took all the valuable stone urns/planters and the stone pineapples off each parapet? There must have been 8 or 9 each worth several thousand pound!
I have a beautiful photograph, circa 1935, of an auntie stood next one.
The Vale have been in negotiations with a company who are keen to lease Old Abbey House for at least 18 months now – how can it take that long!
Capt K – do you have any idea when those decorations went missing? Have you any pictures of them post 1935? I have had a look through various old pics and can’t see any with them in – maybe Jackie Smith might be able to shed some light. My guess is they were long gone before the 2007 refurbishment, otherwise they would have been put back then…
More rumblings about the Upper Reaches here :- http://www.heraldseries.co.uk/news/15030323.Plans_revealed_to_revitalise_boarded_up_hotel_on_River_Thames/
Badger, thanks for that link.
I took a friend, a food connoisseur, to dinner at the Upper Reaches. The meal was really excellent, the best in Abingdon, but the staff where unhelpful and surly. I had to ask them to turn on the light illuminating their prime feature in the room – the very old undershot waterwheel, which I hope the council oblige them to keep.
It would be nice to see both Old Abbey House and the Upper Reaches back in use, with so many out of use buildings in close proximity visitors to the town must think they’ve wandered onto the set of some Zombie movie or similar, certainly seems very odd at night if you walk to Thames Street from Waitrose past the Guildhall and down Checker Walk.
Both premises would make excellent flats.
Daniel – Don’t start! 🙂
Hester, I’ve sent the photo to backstreeter to see if he will put it up?
Here’s one for all you cafe lovers, the Vales planning site is listing an application to turn the closed, one time games/ gambling premis ( 9 Bath St) into another cafe!
In that one street alone you will be able to have a coffee from no less than 9 outlets !
well, you can’t be a cafe via the internet.
it’s a simple fact that these days a lot of former viable shops in a town are no longer so, music, video games, specialist items, even clothes these days.
@rudi I am hoping that before long my Amazon Alexa will hear me say ‘I’d like a skinny latte’ and arrange for a drone to deliver one (the device arranging to open the window just as the drone arrives). That way I can have the coffee without any danger of tedious human interaction.
I think whilst i almost agree with you, in some respects rudi i don’t. Yes, i do do a large amount of shopping online. But not all of it. Every week, without fail, I do go to my high Street, and i go in almost every shop, for a browse. To get hands on, to feel, touch, play with, consider, and…even buy.
However… That “high street” is now all the aisles that Tesco has to offer, for Tesco is my high Street.
It isn’t their ‘offer’ that is better, it is the convenience that i am afforded. It is little to no effort to go and browse in that “high street”. The parking is free – finacially and of hassle. The timings most importantly are entirely at my convenience too.
It isn’t the internet that has brought the demise of the high street, it is the paradigm shift in our expectations of… not WHAT a high street can offer, but WHEN and HOW it offers it. The failure of the high street to cotton on to that is its down fall….. This is evidenced by the fact that many ‘shopping events’ in town still happen when we are out at work….
A bit later, when the kids and wife are in bed, I am going to go and buy some milk and bread. Whilst I am out, I am going to look for a jumper, a scarf, some stationary and an SD card. 11pm tonight will be convenient to me…. I’ll be going to wherever is most convenient; and open.
Ah but Daniel, you could still have your bread & milk delivered to your door before 8 am courtesy of Milk & More, you could buy your jumper & scarf on a Saturday, in town from Dapper st, Fat Face or Peacocks and get your stationary from Prices ( or Smiths ) you can also have 2 hours free parking too which begs the question- why would you want to do a solitary shop at 11 pm when you could spend a couple of enjoyable hours in town with all your family on a Saturday ?
By the way, who took all the flags down. And replaced them with a few scraggy looking strips off bunting?
Enjoyable hours in Abingdon town centre? The only time that happens is about 9pm after a few beers…
I currently live in a small town about 2 hours away from Seattle. It’s getting easier to buy many things here at the same prices as Amazon because the smaller shops are able to join larger independent distributors or buyer coops that can offer competitive pricing. Easier to return items too.
Otherwise the shops focus on smaller brands or designer labels.
In many ways it’s easier to shop here than in the Seattle neighborhoods I used to live in.
The Bunting was put up by the Bid
I think captain, you may have underscored my point…
The issue isn’t whether those items are available in town; it’s *when* they are available. It simply isn’t convenient to go to town on Saturday. And regardless…i *want* to go tonight. That is my whim. A shop lives and dies by serving people’s whims. Hopefully there are enough whims served to make a living. (It’s not for me to come up with whims and keep shops going… its up to a business to identify my whim and fulfill it)
The reality of course is that i sometimes do go to town…for all the reasons you point out, and luckily can walk in. I value my high Street and support it when i can…But the point still remains…the way the country shops changed drastically about 25 years ago…. because of supermarkets. The internet was just a further step. A similar epoch to two wage families becoming more normal. When people became ‘richer’ but time poorer….
The behemoth that is the high street failed to adapt decades ago. The high street is doomed for as long as it continues to fail to adapt.
It would be an interesting community experimet if Tesco and Waitrose had less parking space, that was paid for – with a genuine and tangible fear of a fine, and opened at 9.30, and were closed by 5.30, 6 days a week….at the same time that there was free parking in town – in Queen St car park and the one behind Wildwood and also on Stert St/Bath St/Abbey Close/West and East St Helend St… and the shops were open 24/7…..
I understand perfectly where you’re coming from Daniel, but I don’t think the demise of the High st is in total due to the failiuer of its traders to adapt? For instance, last night we had a meal in limoncello and the owner ( Salvatore) who I’ve known for many years was telling me of the growing amount of customers who book a table only to phone him 15 or so minutes before they’re due, cancelling because they can’t find anywhere to park! The multi car park is closed, west St. Helens car park is full if parkers living in the proliferation of flats that gave no parking and all the on street slots are taken up with our ubiquitous taxis, next a long time independent told me of a regular customer who rang him to say he’s abandoned his journey from Wallingford to pick up his goods because he’s been stuck on the Culham rd for an hour!
There is only so much our traders can do , the rest is for councils to sort and us to support them- or lose them!
Paul, why did the BID put that string of bunting up? The flags looked much better, besides, they’ll be in pieces before summer, BID of a waste of money !
The comments from the ‘high street is doomed’ or ‘demise of the high street’ brigade are ludicrous. Demise on what basis – no longer catering to your highfalutin tastes? Because notjing is open at 11pm? Tough, the shop profile is adapting that’s all. Almost full shop tenancy in Abingdon last time I looked. Might not cater to what the doom & gloom brigade need but someone is shopping there
I visyed Lemoncello a few years ago, payed to park in ‘Coxeters’ private car park. When attempts to use the council spaces failed.
Steve, i think you have fundamentally misunderstood. I absolutely don’t have highfalutin tastes! I shop in Tesco for goodness sake!
But i am glad that you are very happy that the high street in crisis phenomenon is in hand, or indeed non existent. You are right Abingdon thrives. Apologies for having a conversion.
captain K 17, Good question about the “bunting”, I completely agree that the flags were much better, and spread across the town. It meant that as soon as you reached the bridge, or the end of Ock Street you were met with them. Hopefully the Town Council will still put up flags again this year.
Bunting – how pathetic if that is the extent of the BID’s efforts to encourage visitors to the town then the businesses of Abingdon have had their money wasted. The person who thought of this needs to up their game or give up !
But there’s almost full shop tenancy, so what’s to worry about? Didcot, Henley, Witney….and Abongdon.
Bring out the bunting!
Talking of Abongdon, well a ‘bong’ to be exact… has anyone noticed the shop behind the county hall has them in their window, obviously nothing illegal in selling the paraphernalia for the consumption of as its the drugs themselves that are illegal.