23 JUNE 1933, Page 16

Oxford is a long way ahead of any other place

in the art

of preservation, and the vigour of the accomplishment. No monument can be too high for Sir Michael Sadler and

the rest or indeed for the Pilgrim's ,Trust and an anonymous donor. In co-operation with the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the National Trust they have preserved in perpetuity scenes of elevated beauty of which some were already labelled for destruction and defilement. Since the Oxford Preservation Society is. a model and a pioneer it has special obligations to make its, example perfect. The

wood on Shotover, still encased in many strands of barbed wire, is misleadingly described as a spinney used for forestry. It is, in faet, a wood of tall and very closely

grown larches, with an undergrowth of brambles and nettles and elder ;' and in one co- rner an ardent forester has planted

some exotic willows and other trees. The beautiful acreage of gorse and grass above it still has orie placard expressed in quaint idiom, " Trespassing not allowed." Fortunately little notice is taken of it, but its tendency is—as I saw—to attract the less deiirable and repel the more desirable visitor.

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