Sir – I must point out that the photograph of the university flats near Port Meadow published in your March 28 issue is seriously misleading. It is captioned: “The contentious flats seen from Port Meadow”, but is actually taken from a point some way south of Port Meadow, looking north-east, across Cripley Meadow Allotment.
I hope you will be publishing an equally large photograph from Port Meadow, which would show that the building does not loom over it in the way suggested by those who object to it, but lies to the south and angled away from it. The strongest argument against the building is that it blocks the view of the ‘dreaming spires’ of central Oxford, but these are at least 1.75km away, across level ground, and I don’t recall much of a view of them. It would be helpful if someone could produce a photograph of it.
Certainly there was a view of the tower of St Barnabas, hardly so wonderful a feature. More serious is the loss of the view of Wyatt’s Radcliffe Observatory, only half as distant as the other ‘dreaming spires’, but this is obstructed by the previously erected building between the new flats and the southern tip of the meadow, not by the flats themselves. I do urge those who object to the flats to concentrate on an unobtrusive surfacing to them, rather than the unrealistic demand for the removal of two storeys.
And if they really care for the meadow, should they not agitate for the replacement of the crude, industrial bridge over the Thames, as well as the screening of the unpicturesque northern fringe of the Meadow with more trees?
Or is it that they are far more concerned to resist any change than to secure improvements?
Edmund Gray, Iffley