Platteln for the Queen

As we all know, the Queen has two birthdays. One is the 21st April (today!), the day on which she was actually born. Happy birthday, Your Majesty! The other is not a fixed date, but usually the second Saturday in June, the day on which the official celebrations take place. In June 2006 Abingdon celebrated

Abingdon’s Queen Victoria

This article attempts to describe the gift of the Queen Victoria statue to Abingdon and some of the many events to which it has been witness. Could she speak, she would have many a tale to relate about her time here from 1887. Before Queen Victoria, there was an obelisk on the Market Place, with

Extreme Weather in Abingdon: Rain and Flood

People have lived in Abingdon and in settlements in the same spot before the town existed for millennia. One of the reasons why they chose that spot for living is the location by the river. A river is a handy source of water, and it can be a natural barrier but also a vital transport

Grinling Gibbons on the move

If you have visited Abingdon Museum, you will have seen the mirror with the large ornately carved frame hanging on the wall in the Sessions Gallery. However, if you have visited very recently, you will not have seen the mirror. That is because it has temporarily travelled elsewhere. The frame is one of Abingdon Museum’s

Nelson, HMS Victory and Abingdon Museum

One of the real curiosities in the museum collection is a small piece of wood, not shaped into anything in particular, just an irregular block. The significance lies in where the wood has come from: it is from the Victory, the famous ship which is now a major tourist attraction in Portsmouth. There is no

Abingdon Fair Past and Present

After we missed out on it last year, we could enjoy the fair again this year, filling the Market Place and stretching all the way down Ock Street. Today the Runaway Fair is on, and this gives us the opportunity to look back on the fair(s) of Abingdon in history. One of our team members

Clocking In At Abingdon Museum

A recent arrival at Abingdon Museum is this handsome long-case clock, now on display in the Attic Gallery. It was a donation from Sir Hugo Brunner, whose family has owned the clock for a long time. It used to be at Denman College, the adult education college set up by the Federation of Women’s Institutes

The Origins of Archaeology

We are currently in the second week of this year’s Festival of Archaeology, a nationwide celebration of all things archaeological, organized by the Council for British Archaeology. Here at Abingdon Museum we are participating as well. But it got me thinking: since when have people been “doing” archaeology? Some people always must have been interested

Lights, Camera, Action at Abingdon Museum

Recently Abingdon Museum was the venue for a film production, with two of its objects in a starring role. Filmmaker Felix Melia contacted the museum to ask about the possibility of shooting footage of a couple of Anglo-Saxon mounts. These mounts are small metal ornaments, looking a bit like a snake curved in a figure

Lord Norreys of Rycote

The subject of this post, Sir Henry Norreys, Baron Norreys of Rycote, did not play much of a role in the history of Abingdon, although he did once hold the office of High Steward of Abingdon. He has multiple connections with the history of Berkshire and Oxfordhire, though, and is important as ancestor of the