Oxford Crown Court Picture: ED NIX A chemist who left his victim with a ‘nasty’ injury after assaulting him in an Oxford bar will be sentenced in September. Christopher Fox, 30, an industrial chemist, admitted brawling with the man in The Bullingdon, Cowley Road, on October 13, 2019. Appearing before Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday, July 28, Fox, of Stert Street, Abingdon, pleaded guilty to affray. His barrister, Audrey Mogan, suggested there had been some provocation from the victim. Judge Maria Lamb set the case down for sentencing on September 10. She said: “On the face of it, it certainly crosses the custody threshold. So I will, given the defendant is a man of no previous convictions, accede to the request for a pre-sentence report.”
The weather is one of the most common topics of local conversation, especially on those occasions when the Thames bursts its banks as it did over Christmas. Many Abingdon residents made the almost ritual pilgrimage to Abingdon Bridge to view for themselves the extent of the flooding and compare it mentally with other occasions they had witnessed or heard about from older relatives. Over the centuries the town’s three rivers, the Thames and its tributaries the Ock and the Stert, have burst their banks resulting in widespread flooding. Flood markers at Abingdon Lock record the height of the Thames during the worst years: 1875, 1894, 1947 and 2014. Fifteenth century townsmen and merchants had the foresight to add flood arches to the end of Abingdon Bridge and construct the connecting causeway to old Culham Bridge.