JERICHO ECHO ARTICLE
July 1988
Various plans for the British Rail site are being mooted and, and may well affect the area beside the canal and thus all Jericho. Last Autumn a few houses one side of Nelson Street were invited to comment on plans for housing (including much needed social housing) small retail units etc., with some landscaping round Rewley Abbey site. It was unclear, however, which trees near the canal would remain. Now we hear of a "Science Park" - this means not a museum nor a park but innovative research linked with industry; and if Warwick's example is a precedent is only viable if expansionist; Warwick, not near houses but superstores, is over 400 acres, with large-scale speculative building and heavy traffic. However small the proposed plan here, we surely need open discussion and some guarantees - on traffic, possible pollution and noise, the effect on the water table of damp Jericho. Ruskin when arguing for education based on more than books, called for a "park" round this Uiversity, not however a "science park:", but one where "every English f1ower can b1oom in luxuriance and every living creature creature that haunts wood and stream know that it has happy refuge." At present the canal provides such refuge to foxes, hedgehogs, deer, lizards and kingfishers plus Jerichoites; can we ensure that this corridor of wilderness is not destroyed? Would anyone be interested in forming a Canal Preservation Group - to fill in some potholes and to link with Port Meadow? Above all , whatever scheme goes ahead surely we don't want to 1 ose our Victorian horizon; please not brutal buildings towering beside Barney, not college-style quads really over 100 ft. tall, and not more parking problems in the streets. If a science park is to "raise the horizons of education" - in Mr Baker 's Herculean metaphor - can we ensure that it doesn't raze our Jericho horizon. Jericho famously does not need walls; we have our boundary - the canal with its glimpses opf greenness visible up to Walton Stree. Let us have open discussion on all plans. We don't want to have to call in Joshua again!Author: Jennifer Searle