The Francis Frith Collection.
You are here: Home > Explore your past > England > Oxfordshire > East Hagbourne
2008 Christmas Gift Guide - great gifts for your family and friends

East Hagbourne

East Hagbourne photos (4 available)

Old photo of East Hagbourne

East Hagbourne maps (2 available)

Old map of East Hagbourne

East Hagbourne books (11 available)

East Hagbourne memories

Boot Inn 1955, now The Old Boot, a private house

East Hagbourne, the Boot Inn c1955

Ceased operation as a pub in 1959. Now (2007) privately occupied by the Beran family. Previous owners were a builder who divided the land, the village schoolmaster, and the Jarvis'. A few relics of its pub days remain with serving hatches still visible and vertical planking in the hallway. The black rectangle to the left of the building was the privy, now gone. The large tree behind has gone but we have a Silver Birch of equal size by the front gate.
Contributed by Max Beran

Oxfordshire memories

Boot Inn 1955, now The Old Boot, a private house

East Hagbourne, the Boot Inn c1955

Ceased operation as a pub in 1959. Now (2007) privately occupied by the Beran family. Previous owners were a builder who divided the land, the village schoolmaster, and the Jarvis'. A few relics of its pub days remain with serving hatches still visible and vertical planking in the hallway. The black rectangle to the left of the building was the privy, now gone. The large tree behind has gone but we have a Silver Birch of equal size by the front gate.
A memory of East Hagbourne contributed by Max Beran

My Childhood in Cholsey

Cholsey, Wallingford Road c1960

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

Cholsey, Wallingford Road c1960

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 East Hagbourne & 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".