Cholsey
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Map of Oxfordshire
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Cholsey books (11 available)
Cholsey memories
Read and share memories of Cholsey and Oxfordshire inspired by Frith photos
My Childhood in Cholsey
I was born in Cholsey in 1946 and spent probabably the best childhood I could have in a wonderful country village. I attended the village school, I was in the Church Choir and also the Brownies. A wonderful Vicar came to the village in approx 1956 (can't remember the exact year) Mr Bontoft he was called and I became very friendly with his daughter Lisa together with my next door neighbour, Beryl Hobbs, we had so much fun. My mother (Bessie Smith) also took in an evacuee during the war, he was called Brian Barham. He loved the village so much he demanded he had his first year at the village school and he also came back to visit us every ...read more here
Contributed by Linda Clarke
Dad evacuated to Cholsey WW2
I recently found your site and was excited to show it to Dad. He was evacuated out of central London during WW2. He was sent to live with the Bumpass Family from Cholsey. Andrew and Mary were their names and they had two children Eileen and Dennis. Dad told us lots of happy memories that he had of his time in Cholsey. He remembers the old school and Bunkers hill, tha old pavillion in the centre of the village where tramps slept. He went to Sunday School and speaks very fondly of a Mrs Kelson who ran the mission .
He never returned to visit the Bumpass family, because even though he was happy with them he had memories of a ...read more here
Contributed by Donna McKenzie
Oxfordshire memories
My Childhood in Cholsey
I was born in Cholsey in 1946 and spent probabably the best childhood I could have in a wonderful country village. I attended the village school, I was in the Church Choir and also the Brownies. A wonderful Vicar came to the village in approx 1956 (can't remember the exact year) Mr Bontoft he was called and I became very friendly with his daughter Lisa together with my next door neighbour, Beryl Hobbs, we had so much fun. My mother (Bessie Smith) also took in an evacuee during the war, he was called Brian Barham. He loved the village so much he demanded he had his first year at the village school and he also came back to visit us every ...read more here
A memory of Cholsey contributed by Linda Clarke
Dad evacuated to Cholsey WW2
I recently found your site and was excited to show it to Dad. He was evacuated out of central London during WW2. He was sent to live with the Bumpass Family from Cholsey. Andrew and Mary were their names and they had two children Eileen and Dennis. Dad told us lots of happy memories that he had of his time in Cholsey. He remembers the old school and Bunkers hill, tha old pavillion in the centre of the village where tramps slept. He went to Sunday School and speaks very fondly of a Mrs Kelson who ran the mission .
He never returned to visit the Bumpass family, because even though he was happy with them he had memories of a ...read more here
A memory of Cholsey contributed by Donna McKenzie
Extracts From Cholsey & Oxfordshire books
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".
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".
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".
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".
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".