The Controversy of the Meadow Road

by OISE Oxford Tutor Kit Villiers

When the weather is good (it does sometimes happen even in the UK!) it's nice for workers, shoppers, students, etc., to take lunch outside, e.g. a nice sandwich in the park. Unfortunately
Oxford is a bit short of city centre parks or indeed open spaces of any kind within walking distance of Carfax.  

One of the nearest is Christ Church Meadow. This large water meadow, unspoilt since the 14th century, provides a welcome haven for office workers and tourists alike; although it's a bit short of benches and you have to watch out for geese droppings if you've time to venture as far as the river and plan to sit on the grass watching students training for Eights Week, it's still a wonderful way of getting away from the rush of the city for a few moments.

Astonishingly this oasis of relative peace was almost lost to us for ever some 50 years ago.

In those days the centre of Oxford, like most other towns along the A40, was a terrible traffic bottleneck. Cars choked the High - one of the most beautiful streets in Europe - and Cornmarket. With very few pedestrian crossings, you took your life in your hands even trying to cross the road; as for gazing in peace and quiet at the famous skyline - forget it.

The current solution is to ban cars from the city centre almost completely, as belatedly happened under the Oxford Transport Policy a few years ago. But, incredible as it seems now, the thinking of transport planners in the 50s and 60s was that the car was king: the aim of transport policy should be, they thought, to try to ensure that private cars, clearly the mode of transport of the future, should be enabled to travel as fast as possible, and blow the consequences.

The solution to the problem in the High was, they decided, to by-pass it completely by building a road from St Aldate's to St Clement's, i.e. right across Christ Church Meadow. Various versions of the scheme were put forward over a number of years, but they were all perfectly ghastly, and all based on the premise that the car was the best mode of transport to get around, even in an historic city like Oxford.

Fortunately the tide turned. Modern planners believe cities are to be lived in, and are not places that can simply be concreted over to speed up traffic. In fact the emphasis now is on slowing down the car by speed humps, etc. and encouraging people to walk, cycle or to use public transport - exactly the opposite of earlier days. In these changed circumstances the Meadow Road was doomed, and it finally bit the dust in around 1970, although there was a rearguard action for a time in favour of an alternative route through where the Four Pillars hotel now stands.

What is amazing now, looking back, is the power these planners had: Christ Church itself considered the scheme 'repugnant and offensive' and both the university and the Oxford Preservation Trust opposed the road, but despite this the scheme very nearly went ahead, such was the power of the car lobby and the general belief that the car represented modernity and everything else should bow down before it.

Good riddance, I say. Bench or no bench, rain or shine,  I'm off to feed the ducks, who quite possibly don't realise what a reprieve they had...