Abingdon County Hall Museum

Abingdon Museum Friends work with and for Abingdon County Hall Museum, in its role as a focal point for Abingdon’s residents, the provision of a tourist destination for visitors and as a place to learn, understand and enjoy the heritage and environment of Abingdon.

'Abingdon County Hall, completed in 1682, dominates the centre of this ancient town, once the county town of Berkshire. Its principal creator, Christopher Kempster, was one of Sir Christopher Wren's masons. The two men worked together on St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London.

'The Museum, since its inauguration in 1912, has been situated in the Sessions Hall, built to house the Berkshire Assize Courts (transferred to Reading in 1867). The County Hall was adapted and re-opened for the purpose of exhibiting a fine collection of antiquities, the historic core of the collections.

'The Museum's collection of historical and archaeological artefacts includes fragments of vessels from Neolithic times and artefacts from every period thereafter, giving evidence of Abingdon as England's longest continuously occupied town.

'"Of the free-standing town halls in England with open ground floors, this is probably the finest." [Nicholas Pevsner].'