Philip Pullman (cont..)

I used part of Jericho and the canal in my trilogy His Dark Materials, because people who lived and worked on the water, and the network of canals that spread through the whole kingdom, were useful for my story ... But I didn't realise how much the present-day life of the canal was under threat until recently, when the boatyard business came to a head. I've always enjoyed walking along the canal, and looking at the activity - useful, human-scale, craft-based, untidy, interesting - in the boatyard, with the campanile of St. Barnabas watching over it, and the calm water in front.

Reflecting on the idea that ‘All that useful social activity’ may have to be ‘done away with, because it was not making sufficient profit’ Pullman observes: ‘Well, we've gone wrong somehow in the way we live. Jericho is a place where it ought to be possible to maintain a working boatyard, to give a meaning and a focus to the life of the canal. If it does go, something irreplaceable will go with it.’

Philip Pullman, 'The Bohemian Republic of Jericho: Philip Pullman on a place made to human measure', The Jericho Echo, Issue 60/July 2006

Colin Dexter

'When I wrote a novel about Jericho, I learned that potential plans had been afoot to "modernise" (i.e. vandalize) the whole area. Happily the wishes of the denizens, sanity, and aesthetic sensitivity prevailed; and I profoundly hope that they willl do so once more. The present hideous proposals should be dishonourably laid to rest in an appropriate recycling-box.'

Desmond Morris

'I would like to add my voice to the growing protest against the possible loss of the Jericho Boatyard [...] those responsible for destroying the boatyard, which is an important part of old Oxford, will be identified as vandals by future historians of the city.'

Kevin Whately - Lewis in the 'Morse' & 'Lewis' Series

'If you are in any way connected with Jericho, you'll know what a special place it is. Even a small donation could make a real difference.'

Heathcote Williams

‘Jericho's intensely local and distinctive nature currently threatens to be sacrificed to the mercantilism of property privateers and ribbon developers whose plans, on close examination, amount to no more than a jobbing architect's hand-me-downs: atmosphere-proof, Lego-like dwelling-units predictably built not to house the needy but to satisfy the inexorable greed of “buy-to-let” property investors; and which, were such plans to be approved, would go towards rendering Jericho indistinguishable from Milton Keynes in an insidious erosion.

It seems astonishing that yet another predatory beast from Mammon's sickly abyss should surface and yet again threaten a unique place such as Jericho with being buried alive beneath breeze-block service-station architecture and all because the city council seems only to be fulfilled when cravenly pleasuring ruthlessly commercial outside interests.

In the words of Karl Kraus, “Progress is a Pyrrhic victory over nature”, and it is a short-sighted form of progress that requires the destruction of a place where people feel happy, and where once a group of seminal artists enjoyed a “spiritual fling” and whose work was devoted to celebrating a kind of ethereal, but enduring goodness.’

Thom Yorke & Rachel Owen

'Oxford City Planning department must have the courage to withstand the approaches of relentless developers and their PR companies who have no considerations other than cash.'

Bill Bryson

A decade or so ago Oxford's planning panjandrums were deftly satirised by Bill Bryson in his Notes from a Small Island:
'You know, we've been putting up handsome buildings since 1264; let's have an ugly one for a change.' Then the planning authorities had to say, “Well, why not? Plenty worse in Basildon.”’

‘Then,’ Bryson continues, ‘the whole of the city -students, dons, shopkeepers, office workers, members of the Oxford Preservation Trust - had to acquiesce and not kick up a fuss. Multiply this by, say, 200 or 300 and 400 and you have modern Oxford. And you tell me that it is one of the most beautiful, well-preserved cities in the world? I'm afraid not. It is a beautiful city that has been treated with gross indifference and lamentable incompetence for far too long, and every living person in Oxford should feel a little bit ashamed.’

Bryson asked ‘What sort of mad seizure was it that gripped the city's planners, architects and college authorities in the1960s and 1970s? Did you know that it was once seriously proposed to tear down Jericho, a district of fine artisans' homes, and to run a bypass right across Christ Church Meadow? These ideas weren't just misguided, they were criminally insane.’

Bryson acknowledges Oxford's many virtues: in his view ‘it has moments of unutterable beauty’ and ‘a scattering of prospects that melt the heart’ and he speaks too of ‘being immersed in an architectural treasure house, one of the densest assemblages of historic buildings in the world’, but he also warns that in the light of the city's planners' appalling lapses over the years there is little room for complacency.