East St Helen Street in Abingdon looks much the same as it did in 1890. Credit: English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images
If you were asked to guess the oldest town in Britain, you might not think of Abingdon. But the market town, which lies six miles south of Oxford, claims — and with some justice — to be the “oldest continuously occupied town” in this country. Situated on a loop of the Thames, in a green river valley, Abingdon was a densely-occupied and well-defended settlement by the Iron Age, surrounded by ditches which can still be traced in the plan of the modern town. Throughout the Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods, the town’s population persisted, and by the tenth century had become the site of an important monastery.
Tourists who come to Oxford from around the world rarely make their way to Abingdon; it’s a working town, not a showplace. Its central shopping area was a casualty of post-war planners, a mass of modern concrete and chain stores; to the north, new housing estates are creeping ever closer to the famous university city. What might have been Abingdon’s chief tourist attraction, its cathedral-like abbey church, was destroyed five centuries ago.
And yet few towns are better proof of just how long and rich the history of apparently ordinary places can be. The two caveats in Abingdon’s claim to longevity (“town”, rather than city, and “in continuous occupation”) are significant, because it’s in these smaller communities — and the remarkable continuity of their institutions and collective lives — that the bedrock of British history lies.
The monks of Abingdon were making books and writing history centuries before any scholars came to settle in Oxford. One of the most influential figures in the late Anglo-Saxon church, St Æthelwold, was abbot here in the tenth century. A vigorous and industrious man — and a champion of educational and religious progress — Æthelwold didn’t spend long at Abingdon. But it still bears traces of the work he did to build up the abbey: a stream in the town, once the abbey millstream, follows the course Æthelwold and his monks set for it a thousand years ago. They may have been copying the line of the prehistoric defences, already ancient by Æthelwold’s time.
Æthelwold and his fellow abbots were running a school at Abingdon when Oxford was just a crossing-place over the Thames. But by the twelfth century, when Abingdon’s most famous son was born, the balance was already beginning to shift. Abingdon’s own saint, Edmund, was born into a middle-class family in the town around 1174. His mother wanted him to be well-educated, so she sent him not to the abbey but to school in Oxford, which by that time was gathering the communities of teachers and students who would form the nucleus of the university.
A devout and studious boy, Edmund made the most of his opportunities, and prospered both in Oxford and at university in Paris. He was known for his skill as a lecturer, his attention to his students, and his generosity to poorer scholars. He ended his career as Archbishop of Canterbury, but it’s as “Edmund of Abingdon” that he has gone down in history — and how he’s remembered here.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeNice thought Eleanor, and I’m sorry to bear down on your optimistic piece – especially as I might be the first comment. But surely this time it’s different? In Oxfordshire, houses are being built by the thousand every year, and who will fill them? Sadly, not people who fondly remember Mabel and her famous son.
I think that’s sort of the point of the article – the majority of us live in the town in the here and now and whatever mindless vandals like the 1960s planners and Richard Rich’s Court of Augmentations do to the it, that history is still there and keeps being added to. Continuous occupation, not continuous reverence for the place. I’ve lived in the town for more than 20 years and it is a very pleasant place to be, however, if you take a moment, that history is visible all around you. Like the room over one of the pubs you can hire for functions that was once used by Charles 1st to plan the battle of Oxford and the house where William of Orange stayed (in the same street) on his way into London from Plymouth. Lift your head and it is all there.
I may be unsual in my love of English history – and my tiny place in it. But surely it is easier to protect the past when you are connected to it. When Abingdon Council is eventually taken over by non whites, will they really be that bothered about protecting old places where kings took council? They may even declare it heretical and deliberately pull it down. That is what I mean by the feeling that this time it is different. Only time will tell about the demographics, and the attitude of those in charge in 2100.
You are right. The people taking controls of our towns and cities, and ultimately our country, have no connection to it. Indeed they scorn it, as you suggest. If you want a pre-vision of the UK in 2100, look no further than Beirut.
You may wish to consider yourself, Geoff, the wording of your post that clearly is racist in tone, which should be picked up by the Unherd moderation checks, if they have such a thing.
Think of interwar Nazi Germany and someone writing posts ‘when Germany is taken over by the Jews’.
Have you any evidence that councils serving populations with a diverse population take little or even less interest of their history than councils with majority white UK populations?
Your statement reeks of prejudice.
I don’t think it is prejudiced or racist to observe than many non-indigenous British do not share the same attachment to this land or value its history and culture in the same way. Many are happy to admit as much. Demographic predictions envisage a white minority by the mid 2060’s, an interesting question is to ask yourself if this bothers you or not. I think identity is intimately bound up in ethnicity which makes ‘identifying’ as British quite a challenge for most immigrants. I wish it wasn’t so but we shouldn’t favour what we would like the truth to be over what it actually is.
In Germany in the 30s there were about 500,000 Jews. They were not seeking to take over Germany, so had I said that I would have been wrong, but not necessarily racist. In the UK today there are about 2.5m Muslims and many other non-whites winning seats in local elections and taking power. None of this implies racism just my view of the facts. I fully support Muslims in keeping their societies together in the Middle East and wish them well. You ask for evidence and whilst there is still a long way to go, I will say Bristol, Sadiq Khan and his statue commission, and Rhodes must fall etc. Even if nothing else, our cultural history will fade through disinterest faster than it otherwise would.
So UK Muslims, like Sadiq Khan, and their children should either be defranchised or repratriated?
Really some of these comments, in implication certainly, if not in substance, are more extremist and xenophobic than the National Front was in the seventies.
In fact, the toppling of Colson in Bristol, has probably served to focus attention on a dimension of our cultural history, which to be true history will be contentious and multi-faceted.
I think or at least hope that the majority white UK population would want the slave trade accurately remembered rather than celebrated.
I don’t know how old you are but I cannot accept that the commenters above, talking about demographics and cultural anxiety mostly, are “more extremist and xenophobic” than the gangs of skinheads belonging to the NF, often armed, who used to roam the streets in the 70s.
That’s a bit far fetched.
Perhaps you just want to be insulting.
42
Young girls were gr-omed, r aped, abused and sold for sex by the gang of Oxford men, who have now been convicted of a catalogue of sex offences.
Det Insp Simon Morton, of Thames Valley Police, said:
“They start out at 11 or 12 as ordinary girls, in our case, and by the
time they’re finished they’re hollow.
“They are shells of what they should be and the little girl in there is gone.
“It’s s exual a trocities, it’s t orture.
“You can’t report it, you can’t put it on TV, you can’t write it down. We have had members of the press in tears in court.
“It’s been horrendous.”
This was a report from the 1st Oxford trial in 2013. There have been 4 subsequent g ang trials and a failed trial(Operation Nautical). There have been 12 such trials for the Thames Valley as a whole. The former DPP Lord Macdonald described these atrocities as “deeply R crimes”, which indeed they are are. Naturally only the tip of the iceberg will have been revealed. This is the scouring of the Shire with a vengeance, the most vulnerable have been evilly, cunningly targeted – and destroyed.
For this we have stupid, purblind politicians and the great army of censurious, finger-wagging liberal know-alls to thank
It is as Waters says “we have imported h ell on earth”
My feeling is that 6 such trials in a city of 150k is rather a lot real
“Have you any evidence that councils serving populations with a diverse population take little or even less interest of their history than councils with majority white UK populations?”
Come to Bristol and see what they do to statues they don’t like.
I lived in Abingdon for a couple of years in the 70’s – in my twenties. I’ve always had a love of history though that was fairly dormant at the time. There were lot of pubs there and I drank a lot of Morlands beer, which I liked, and Morrells – which I didn’t really. Used to play a lot of bar billiards, darts and occasionally aunt sally, met some pretty simple locals during the course of this.
Agree with you re demographics. In Oxford alone there have been six GG trials since 2013, 12 for the Thames Valley as a whole – a scouring of the Shire already. The supremacist religion expanding fast in England has no interest in our past and culture, Henry and Thomas Cromwell will be like a ripple in the pond compared to the changes that will be wreaked on our buildings ad culture.
Remember that the kings of historical times – Alfred, a Saxon, the Normans and Angevins, part-Welsh Henry VIII under whom the abbey was destroyed – had their heritage elsewhere, and, even with population genetics, we cannot be certain how deep the roots are, that people have in age-old communities. Those who are inclined to cherish the past around them will do so, wherever they settle. Those who don’t, won’t, even if their ancestry in a place is as old as the human species.
Well, Philip and Nick. Thank you for a dose of optimism which I obviously sadly don’t share. However, I can say that if I went to live in Iran or somewhere, I’d be delighted to claim a tiny part in their long and varied history. Perhaps there are a lot more people like me (and you) amongst the immigrants to our country. Let’s hope so.
Abingdon was a Saxon town and Alfred was a Saxon king whose dynasty, the Gewissae, had their roots in the middle Thames area around Abingdon. So don’t really get your point.
Abingdon is an amazing place. In the peaceful bucolic meadows, the Thames rips past at a fairly frightening speed. Upstream there’s a place where two successive bridges cross branches of the river, where I once saw a kingfisher … There’s a great fifteenth-century poem extant about how the first ever bridge was built at Abingdon:
‘The people proved their power with the pickaxe,
The mattock was manhandled right well a while,
With spades and shovels they made such a noise
That men might hear them thence a mile.
Wives went out to see how they wrought,
Five score in a flock, it was a fair sight,
In broad cloths fair white bread they brought,
Cheese and chickens clearly ydight …’ [because the pay was so good] …
https://archive.org/details…
Places stay the same so long as the humans who live there stay the same. When the humans who live in a place change suddenly, so does the character of the place.
cf.
Egypt: Hellenistic Christian -> Arab Muslim
Britain: Celtic Christian -> Germanic pagan
Konigsberg: Western Germans -> Eastern Russians
Spain: Visigothic Christian -> Berber Muslim
North America: Aboriginal Animism -> European Christian
People who find themselves living as their ancestors did in a place which is also stable and peaceful do not know how precious, and fragile, their way of life is.
Excellent examples. Once the humans changed, the places changed. There is nothing magical about a given patch of soil that makes those living there behave in a certain way. (At least not over human timespans: it may be that temperate and tropical climates are conducive over the course of millennia to certain broad types of culture.) Cultures are artefacts of humans. Once the humans in all of those lands changed dramatically, the cultures of those lands changed dramatically.
Likewise, the Great Replacement currently being suffered by Europe is causing the culture to change dramatically, and in my view for the worse.
“…most recently it’s become part of a region branded ‘Science Vale UK’, which intends to be “a global hotspot for enterprise and innovation”. But you can have innovation and still remember the past: a place of enterprise this has always been, as much now as when Æthelwold marked out his millstream.”
If you believe this, I gotta bridge I’d like to sell ya.
Actually, Abingdon, when properly studied, points the moral of history: warlords, from Henry VIII to Tony Blair, along with greed (Capitalism) destroy cultural value. Pretty clearly, Abingdon is already on the way to tourist theme park. And the need for upscale condos for philistine britain-ophile billionaires will put period to locals and their historical memories.
As far as I know, genetic testing has shown that descendants of old communities like that at Abingdon are often still around in their particular areas today, it’s surprising.
I live in a market town where many of the current population have ancestors in the churchyards round about, going back hundreds of years. I think the staying power of the native population should not be underestimated nor is there a reason for divisiveness, it’s perfectly possible that in a thousand years time there will be descendants of 21st century incomers living alongside descendants of the more ancient British population. I prefer to hope for the best.
Why no mention of the magnificent 17th century Town Hall, regarded by Pevsner as the finest in England? Its only rivals must be Peterborough or Kings Lynn.
Perhaps the destruction of the great Abbey is as a harbinger of worse things to come, as hinted at by Geoff Cox below?
Either way so many English Cities/Towns must rue the day when they destroyed their great Abbey/Cathedral churches. To name but a few, in no particular order, Reading, Faversham, Coventry, Oxford, Bury St Edmunds, Cirencester, Evesham,Leicester and Lewis.
Where they survive at say, Gloucester, Chester, Peterborough, Selby, Sherborne, Hexham, Romsey, Bristol, Cartmel, and Beverley (Coll’), they, as Robert Aske said are, “the beauties of our land” How right he was!
There is an unpleasant amount of racism in these comments.
Hardly surprising, given HMG’s policy of almost unrestricted immigration since the 1960’s is it?
We never voted for this, it was imposed by both political parties regardless of electoral disgust. Now we shall reap what those deceased morons have sowed.
As the Bible says “there will be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth”.
No Joff – there is no racism in any these comments – at least not in the way I think you mean. To compare races and describe differences is not racist. I presume you recognise there are some differences? Anyway, we are not talking about race here, since most Muslims are the same race as me – Indo-European Caucasian. What we are talking about here is a clash of cultures.
Interesting to read about the history of Abingdon, as I do not know it well, like many people I have driven past it on the A34.
It reminds me of a different form of history – industrial buildings. I viewed the ruins of an iron works today. It relied on water power and in the 1800s it exported agricultural cutting tools to Europe, North America, Australia etc.
Alas it did not modernise, and was put out of business by cheaper steam powered competitors and was closed by 1890.
So I would suggest, that unless Abingdon wishes to become a ruin, it should grab the Science Vale UK with both hands.
I lived and worked in Abingdon for a couple of years (2010-12). I remember the abbey grounds – quite a nice place to sit and watch the world go by. I recall there was some sort of festival when people threw buns off the town hall for some historical reason. What night life there was seemed to centre around a few pubs and ‘Stickies’ the local nightclub. Think that turned into a gym just before I left and nightlife effectively ended apart from the pubs. Everybody went to Oxford. What struck me most though was the busy road through town off the A34 – a constant stream of traffic most of which was passing through. My favourite pub in the area was a thatched roof pub in Wantage (The fox?). I wasn’t aware it was calling itself (or being called) the oldest town in England.
Is the ‘Kings head and welly’ as we referred to it still going, These days we drive past on the A34 occasionally, preferring to lunch at ‘The Rose Revived’ at Newbridge ~6 miles away.
The Kings Head and Bell is still going – just had a big refurb. I’m.a.chef there and it is a lovely pub