…
And thanne shal the abbot of Abyngdone,
And al his issue for evere,
Have a knok of a kyng,
And incurable the wounde.”
When the Abbey was suppressed in 1538, its annual income was £1,876 10s. 9d., equal to about £34,000, present value.
With the disappearance of the Abbey, the town of Abingdon grew, and continued to prosper by clothing and by agriculture until the opening of the railway era. When the Great Western Railway was originally planned, in 1833, it was intended to take it through Abingdon, instead of six miles south, as at present, and to make this, instead of Didcot, the junction for Oxford. But Abingdon was strongly opposed to the project, and procured the diversion of the line, and so it remains to this day an exceedingly awkward place to reach or to leave, by a small branch railway. It has thus lost, commercially, to an incalculable degree, but in other ways—in the preservation of beauty and antiquity—has gained, equally beyond compute.
CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, ABINGDON.
An architect might find some stimulating ideas communicated to him by the quaint and refined detail observable in many of the old houses. There is, among other curious houses near the Market House, the “King’s Head and Bell,” in an odd classic convention.