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Old map of Harwell

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Harwell memories

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Oxfordshire memories

Grandad

I spent several summer school holidays in Didcot with my mate and grandad,
he lived in Newlands Avenue with my Uncle Bert. Grandad ran the bar in the army camp. He used to send me round to wake up the men first thing. The man in charge was a Sergeant Biggs. Mum worked in the post office where she met Dad, who was stationed at Harwell.
Grandad would come to Hertford by train and return to Didcot so I could spend
my 6 weeks with him. My uncle owned several cars, there was an XK 140 or E Type outside the house from time to time. Grandad's name was Mr A A Attwooll. Does any body remember him?
Regards,
T R ...read more here
A memory of Steventon contributed by thomas johnson

The Prior family of Steventon

Steventon, the Causeway c1955

My grandmother lived in Steventon with her own grandmother around 1880. She was Florence Prior and her own gran was Eliza Prior who by then was a widow and a laundress living in Timsbury Cottage. I have tried to find the cottage but the only place I have seen with a similar name is Timsbury Villa. I sometimes wonder if it is the same place. My own visit to Steventon was around 1986. I remember visiting St Michael's Church and having a picnic in the next field among all the cowslips and other wild flowers. It was beautiful. I walked around the churchyard and found many tombstones for the Prior family including one who was in the Grenadier Guards and was ...read more here
A memory of Steventon contributed by John Howard Norfolk

The best time of my life

I was 8 when I moved to Steventon.  We used to live in Didcot while I was a baby.  I enjoyed Didcot and liked the town side of it.  Also we moved here because my mum and dad wanted to live in the countryside while I was growing up to my teens. My mum is called Sharon Tappin and my dad is called Clive Tappin.  So far we have been here for a year and I really like it here and also I am settled in to the school.
My name is Rebecca Tappin.
A memory of Steventon contributed by Rebecca Tappin

Homesick

I went to Steventon as a 'Mother's Help' to an Italian family.  I came from near Manchester. I had to clean, look after a baby and a toddler and help with cooking.
But I had never been away from home before and decided it wasn't for me.  It was a lovely house on the Causeway which was a listed building. The family didn't own it.  I remember the lady making me wash and iron all my bedding while my mum sat with me in the kitchen to take me home!
A memory of Steventon contributed by Dianne Littlewood

Extracts From Harwell & Oxfordshire books

Abingdon, the Crown and Thistle Hotel c1955

The Crown and Thistle Hotel, first mentioned in 1605, was a coaching inn, and one of the town’s best known ones. It is still popular, and has the truncated remains of its inn courtyard within – we see it here from the yard end of the carriageway through the building. The further part of the yard in this view now has a roof supported on posts to give shelter to tables and chairs.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Stert Street 1893

Skirting the modern shopping centre, our tour reaches Stert Street, which runs south towards the Market Place; in the 1890s, it was one of Abingdon’s main shopping streets. On the right, W H Hooke’s bookshop (now a jeweller’s) is the start of the market place encroachment. We are looking towards St Nicholas’s Church. Until 1883, only its tower was visible; then two pubs which jutted into the street, one on each side, were demolished for road improvement. Little survives on the left today apart from the two gables of No 3, a 15th-century house, partly hidden by the horse-less cart.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Bridge and River Steamer c1955

The Fraternity of the Holy Cross built the two bridges, the causeway across Nag’s Head Island, and then the long causeway that runs south for over a thousand yards across the flood plain to Culham, where they built a five-arched stone bridge between 1416 and 1422. Culham Bridge crossed the cut dug for Abbot Orderic in 1052 and known as the Swift Ditch. It is difficult nowadays to see that quiet stream as the main navigation channel, rather than the Thames itself, but so indeed it was for centuries. This view shows Burford Bridge.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

Abingdon, Bridge Restaurant and Tea Gardens c1950

Stevens’s Boatyard on the east end of Nag’s Head Island also incorporated the landing stage for the Crown and Thistle Hotel in Bridge Street, some hundred yards away from the river. Note the elegant steam launch tied up at the landing stage with its striped awning to protect passengers. The house between the trees is Cosener’s House, built on the site where the cosener or kitcheners lived – he was the medieval official who ran the Abingdon Abbey’s kitchens.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".

West Hanney, Lamb Inn c1955

A little further along the road towards East Hanney is the 1930s Lamb Inn. Beyond it, the pair of gables belong to one of a crescent of 1950s council houses. The drainage ditch on the right has now been filled in and paved over as a footpath, and the area in front of the pub is now entirely a tarmac car park.
An extract from from"Abingdon Photographic Memories".