Oxford and Suburban
BY JOHN BETJEMAN ORE damage has been done to Oxford within living memory than at any time in its long history. I have known Oxford since 1915 when I went as a boy to Lynam's. I knew it during my chequered career as an under- graduate and for the last twenty years it has been the nearest big shopping town for my wife and me. In 1915 one could picnic on the Cumnor Hills, find fritillaries in the Cherwell water meadows, before the upper reaches of that river became a drainage ditch for farmers, wobble over cobbles in the Broad on one's bicycle and see the linesiof horse-trams in some of the streets. The City of Oxford was still a country market town. The country came creeping unexpectedly up to the ends of wide late-Victorian suburban roads in North Oxford. Today all that is gone and an anonymous sprawl which might be Slough or Luton defaces all outskirts but Wytham. There are distant shopping arcades, clusters of concrete lamp standards, arid housing estates, telly masts and tinned food, all used by people who probably are unaware of the old colleges and their beauties, and who are poor things, chained.to the con- veyor belt for most of their lives. To them the fuss in the papers about Oxford traffic is only a problem of how quickest to get to the chain stores in the Corn and if the silly old uni- versity is in the way, then pull it down. Yet there are other citizens, and some of the most enlightened being from these new estates themselves, who know that Oxford could still be the most beautiful city in England. For the heart of the place is still there, contained in that tiny area bordered by St. Giles, the Corn and St. Aldate's on the west, by the Broad and Holy- well on the north, by Magdalen on the east and by Merton Street and Christ Church on the south. • Any plan for Oxford must have as its first consideration the preservation of the beauty and character•. of this old heart of the place. To preserve this Oxford will not be to turn it into a museum, for the dons can continue bawling the Absolute across the hall and the undergraduates can continue cramming their heads with facts or releasing their inhibitions by breaking glass whether the beauty and character of their buildings are preserved or not.
The university and colleges of Oxford are not merely of local but of national and even international importance. They are still used for the purposes for which they were built centuries ago and there seems no reason why they should not continue to fulfil their function, giving to life at Oxford a background that can hardly fail to influence even the most unseeing economist or philologist. But the character of the buildings is preserved not only by tenants, but by quiet and by the green girdle of gardens and meadows. The first has been destroyed and the second is threatened. If one looks at Oxford today what, apart from a few dreary blocks in Bursar's Georgian and clumsy stone patching, destroys the beauty? The answer comes in three words—the internal combustion engine. Parked cars make the streets hideous by the garish and untidy contrast they make against old buildings. The roar of moving cars destroys the peace. Those adjuncts of the motor-car, a tarmac surface replacing cobbles and a smell of petrol drowning that of burning leaves or damp earth, take away from Oxford's beauty too.
Plenty of solutions have been offered, from tunnels under the High to bridges over the meadows or roads along the river bed. Each suggestion has its local supporters, and the disunity about it all is natural among local people. For no local resident can be wholly disinterested, even if he thinks he is. Each college will favour whatever plan suggests a road which does not cross its own property. Each college will be further subdivided by Fellows who own houses in parts of Oxford which may be affected by one or other suggestion. Nor do I wholly trust the aesthetic judgement of most dons, judging by most of the new buildings that have gone up in the uni- versity and the trivial little rose garden, like a bit of Waterer's floral mile, with which Magdalen planted its piece of Thames meadowland which once came right up to the High. The city will be concerned about matters of trade and keeping Cowley as part of Oxford and not letting it become a separate borough. Nor, for all the symbolic burying of hatchets, do city and university wholly trust one another. This is a good thing and keeps both parties on their toes. The city, we must remember, is far older than the university, and it is the county town of a big shire. But all parties seem to regard Oxford primarily as a traffic problem and only secondarily as a beautiful place whose future is in danger.
Before anyone can decide whether the preservation of Oxford is wholly a traffic problem or not, a detailed analysis of the traffic, its origin, type and destination, must be made. This has not been done. Some years ago vehicles passing through or parking in the city were counted, but such numbers convey nothing, because a fifty-foot lorry is equal to twenty motor-bicycles in size, if not in noise.
As soon as a thorough traffic census is taken, Oxford will be able to discover which, if any, of its outer by-passes should be completed. It may even find that the one below Boar's Hill to Botley need never have been built at all. And after the traffic census, adequate car parks must be provided. No one knows now whether space for a thousand or for ten thousand cars is needed. But everyone must know that the present parking arrangements are inadequate and ugly. I should think personally that the solution will have to be in multi-storey car parks on the outskirts of the city. All these problems can be solved, at any rate temporarily, from information obtained from a traffic census. At present everyone is working in the dark. One thing is perfectly certain, ' and that is that Mr. Duncan Sandys has done a public service by spurring on city and university to action.
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