Mieneke Cox wrote many books on the history of Abingdon over the last thirty years, and for many of us – we read it first thanks to her.

The Story of Abingdon – part one – takes us from pre history to 1186 A.D.

At the end of the book she says “In 1186 when the monastery and Abingdon’s growing industries attracted new inhabitants, the town was already old. The pattern was set for the future in which we, the successors of those who trod Abingdon’s streets before us, are responsible for cherishing our precious heritage.”

In “Medieval Abingdon – the story of Abingdon part two” – she says “Abingdon has such a rich medieval history that it has been difficult to fit it into a small, easy-to-read book…”

In her books, she is often a story teller – retelling the stories she told children when working as Curator of Abingdon Borough Museum from 1970 until 1980. But there are other times when she relates the smaller telling details discovered through her researches as an archivist and historian of the town… Take for example The Abbey Gardener’s Accounts 1388/89 “He sold whatever he could – an old fence, firewood, fish, herbage, wine, grapes, fish, vines, cider,apples, pears, nuts, an ash-tree at one shilling.“

The story continues in an exciting part three – Peace and War – which takes in the Civil War where Abingdon was a garrison Town… and then beyond in subsequent books, . Mieneke Cox acknowledged she was indebted to the research of predecessors like Arthur E Preston, and Agnes C Baker etc. , and many helpers …

She died on Tuesday 22nd December, a day before her 81st birthday, and will be greatly missed, particularly at The Abingdon Area Archaeological and Historical Society where she was an active member.

New Years Day and there are a choice of walks. This one is the 6.5 mile Christian Aid walk.

The route this year started and ended at St Helen’s Church in Abingdon, and went via footpaths around Drayton – with a break for refreshments at Drayton Parish Church, then near Milton, Sutton Courtney and returned by Peep-a-Day lane .

A picture of the sun rising on year 2010 seen from the Abbey Meadows in Abingdon at about 8:25 AM.

The strange lights seen by many drifting across the sky at 12:30 AM, after the New Year’s Party, were not an invasion of Triffids, as first supposed, but instead were little candle-lit hot air balloons.

The Vale of the White Horse is the valley of the Ock, a stream which joins the Thames from the west at Abingdon. The pictures were taken today. Four rivers including the Ock were put on flood watch yesterday but no problems yet …

Here is the first stanza of a poem written in 1951 by Phyllis Dawson Clark celebrating the Ock, and called: The Mill Stream

Down from the chalky range of Berkshire hills
Stamped with the cave-man’s god, a lean white horse;
Through rustling cornfields, by a dozen mills
Whose wheels are long since rusty, and across
A thistle wast where winter storms have laid
To rest the hollow trunks, where brittle rot
Harbours the comfrey seedlings that have strayed;
Where centuries of blue forget-me-not
Have sighed away their days unseen, alone,
And sprays of blushing dog-rose bend to kiss
Their own reflection in a pool that’s known
A thousand summers just as sweet as this, —
By the wild rhubarb leaves and giant dock,
Under the willow arches flows the winding Ock.