ABOUT JERICHO - PLANNING
Another makeover for Cranham Street
New developments ahead
Posted - November 05, 2012
The buildings on both sides at the top of Cranham Street are boarded up with metal shutters. Some of the area around Grantham House has at times been taken over by squatters who have lit fires. The developers say that they will finally be starting the renovations in January to produce up-market flats.
Meanwhile across the road the old health centre building now has a similarly forlorn look. In this split building it is more difficult to do a comprehensive redevelopment. The ground floor is owned by the Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust which says it is currently ‘preparing it for marketing’. The upper floors, making up St Paul’s House, consist of eight flats, some Council and some privately owned.
Other planning items
Did you know?
Cranham Street used to be a blot on the city
Before Grantham House was built, the site became notoriously derelict, making Cranham Street according to the local press a ‘blot on the city’ – wrecked by local children, and a refuge for rats and for ‘layabouts sleeping off the drink’ who were repeatedly evicted by the police.
Why Jericho still has such a mix of houses?
Jericho's intriguing mix of housing today owes a lot, to the Residents' Association in the 1960s and 1970s which together with the then Vicar and some local councillors resisted plans to bulldoze the whole area and turn it over to offices and light industrial use.