ABINGDON
There are bits of old wall lining the bank on the town side, and ivy grows freely over them. Many of the houses stand back from the water; a part of the ruined abbey and the long range of the abbot's residence can be seen between masses of blossom. The great exterior chimney of the abbey buildings should particularly be noticed. The blossom at Abingdon is a great feature, and one not to be found everywhere. Horse-chestnuts and holm oaks dip their boughs in the water, and from the branches arises a perfect chorus of birds. Abingdon has its chimneys, of course, as well as hideous buildings suited to modern requirements of business, but in the general view these things are lost sight of.
Burford is a corruption of Borough-ford, and before the building of the bridge in the fifteenth century, the ferry at Culham was the main means of communication with the other side of the river.
The range of Nuneham, below which runs the backwater called the Old River, can be seen to the south-east. If this ever was the main stream it must have been very long ago, for the memory of it is not recorded in any document now extant. The Old River is crossed by another bridge, and the two are linked by a straight road, made by Geoffrey Barbour at the same time as the building of the bridges. There is a picture of Barbour in the almshouses, and this shows the bridge being built in the background; while an illuminated copy of verses tells us:
King Herry the Fyft, in his fourthe yere,
He hath i-founde for his folke a brige in Berkschire,
For cartis with cariage may go and come clere,
That many wynters afore were mareed in the myre.
Culham hithe [wharf or landing] hath caused many a curse,