Abingdon-on-Thames

Abingdon-on-Thames, usually called simply Abingdon, is a historic market town and civil parish on the River Thames in the Vale of the White Horse district of Oxfordshire, England. It was the county town of Berkshire until local government reorganisation moved it into Oxfordshire in 1974. The site was occupied from the early to middle Iron Age, and the remains of a late Iron Age and Roman defensive enclosure lie beneath the town centre. Abingdon Abbey was founded in Saxon times, possibly around 676, and shaped the town through the medieval period, when it was a flourishing centre of the wool trade. Mary I granted a charter making it a borough in 1556. In the twentieth century the town was best known for the MG car factory, which opened in 1929 and closed in 1980, and it lies near major scientific sites such as Culham, Harwell and the Diamond Light Source. The 2011 census recorded the parish population as 33,130.