Our much loved friend, treasurer and king of the river, canal and all waters in Oxford, Rob Valentine passed away on Saturday 12th June 2010.
Rob will be hugely missed by all of us.
Rob was a man who always had time for others, a voice of reason and a steadying hand.
It will be hard not to have him around.
A large part of Jericho has been reclassified by the Environment Agency as flood zone 3.
20th July '09.
In a road show that filled the Jericho Community centre the Environment Agency showed maps and information
As reported in the
Oxford Mail this may impact badly on the household insurance of many Jericho residents.
However the implications for the nature and the density of the build on the boatyard site may be significant.
When asked the what could be built on the site the Environment Agency replied ..."a boatyard".
Added to this is the City Council's announcement last Wednesday 15 th July that they will attempt to compulsory purchase the site using the Sustainable Communities Act.
On the 7th July Jericho Community Boatyard wrote to the receivers Price Waterhouse Coopers requesting that we pay a peppercorn rent to go back into the yard, to have it used as boatyard again.
This will have the dual effect of putting much needed money back into the public coffers ( the UK tax payers are the largest creditors here) and removing that pointless fencing and, of course, providing space for repairing boats.
We await an official reply.
Gyptians' Gathering - Jericho Tavern - 8pm Sunday, December 21st '08
The 10K sponsored run for Jericho took place on Sunday 30 th Nov . Thank you to all those who took part and all those who sponsored. We raised £5,000 in total .
Acoustic Gig at the Gardeners Arms, Plantation Rd. 2nd Dec,
donations to the boatyard appeal. Thank you, we raised £66 !
APPEAL INFO. & UPDATES
Due to the sheer amount of info to be processed this section will be added to with time
Here's Heathcote Williams' 3rd party statement
Here's Heathcote Williams' 3rd party statement
downloadable as a mp3 file (9mb)
Jericho's heritage Address delivered to the Town Hall Inquiry
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
I'd like to mention Jericho's heritage, and, of
course, everything said here, at this Inquiry, and in
particular the Inspector's decision, will all become
part of Jericho's heritage in due course.
In his ‘Notes on a Small Island' Bill Bryson implored
the Oxford authorities to make no more horrendous
planning mistakes.
"Oxford," he writes, "is a beautiful city that has
been treated with gross indifference and lamentable
incompetence for far too long, and every living person
in Oxford should feel a little bit ashamed."
He goes on to ask "What sort of mad seizure was it
that gripped the city's planners, architects and
college authorities in the1960s and 1970s?
"Did you know", he reveals, "that it was once
seriously proposed to tear down Jericho, a district of
fine artisans' homes, and to run a bypass right across
Christ Church Meadow? These ideas weren't just
misguided, they were criminally insane."
Jericho has been continuously inhabited for nearly a
thousand years. It lies in the grounds of what was
Beaumont Palace where Richard the Lionheart was born
in 1157. Ten years later King John was born here - the
Palace stood on what is now the corner of Walton
Street and Beaumont Street.
Jericho may feel no immediately pressing need to be
subjected to a corporate crusade by the mercenaries
of the property market who, as we've so often been
told by their representatives at this Inquiry, claim
to act in the name of progress and in the public
interest, yet, on closer inspection we discover it's
their own progress and their own interests which they
consider paramount.
They appear to regard planning requirements as
inconvenient traffic-cones to be brushed aside by
hiring clever lawyers - much of whose time here has
been taken up with financial matters - namely whether
or not their clients paid too much for the privilege
of potentially being allowed to ruin a precious and
much loved part of Jericho.
Some might consider they could never pay too much for
what they are proposing.
On Tuesday last, on the opening day of this Inquiry,
one developer was quoted as saying that they didn't
like being, I quote, "stung for affordable housing".
The following Tuesday, Castlemore Securities'
representative, Mr Cahill, declared that, I quote,
"what my clients do with the Jericho land is a matter
of economics" and he also referred to, I quote his
words again, "having to bear the burden of affordable
housing" as if it was an unwelcome encumbrance
commonly regarded with distaste in developer circles.
I want to show - and in much greater detail in my
fuller submission - that Jericho's heritage represents
something quite different from this impoverished
mind-set: it's not just about money and Jericho's
housing the less well off on its canal in its
narrowboats has never been regarded as a "burden."
The Jericho boatyard has been here for between a
hundred and fifty and two hundred years sustaining
narrowboats which have provided low-impact, one
hundred-per-cent affordable, socially diverse housing
for the canal workers going back to the early
nineteenth century - and the days of the Jericho
Boatman's Floating Chapel parked just where the
Boatyard is - and later for many of Oxford and
Jericho's workers and their families over generations
and for the genuinely needy.
Jericho's narrowboats represent a life in the slow
lane at one remove from life -shortening stresses and
economic pressures - Wordsworth's "Getting and
spending with which we lay waste our hours."
The writer Hugh Massingham wrote that "The culture of
the canals is a distinctive section of the English
tradition... a way of life that made the England of
the spirit".
As James Elroy Flecker write of this particular
stretch of the canal: "When you have wearied of the
valiant spires of this County Town, /Of its wide
white streets and glistening museums, and black
monastic walls,/ Of its red motors and lumbering
trains, and self-sufficient people,/ I will take you
walking with me to a place you have not seen/ - Half
town and half country-the land of the Canal./ It is
dearer to me than the antique town: I love it more
than the rounded hills:/ Straightest, sublimest of
rivers is the long Canal."
The Jericho Boatyard that served that canal so
irreplaceably wasn't closed down for the greater
good - namely to house a larger number of homeless
people than could be accommodated by the narrowboats -
the yard was closed down simply to make money and an
integrated community was cruelly ripped apart.
Hence the strength of local feeling that's rippled
outwards so dramatically. Castlemore Securities'
present notion of retaining just four per cent cent of
Jericho's land for boats - space, in fact, for just
one token boat - adds a mean-minded insult to an
already outrageous injury to the generous ancestral
spirit of Jericho.
St Ebbe's is gone for good, its cattle market and its
picaresque pubs and its Paradise Square - like a
little fan-tailed Georgian Square in Dublin -was
swapped for grey municipal concourses and gruesome
multi-levelled car-parks to the chagrin of those who
knew it as it was. Ironically as it happens some of
these very buildings in their turn are shortly to be
removed - a mere forty years after their ill-judged
conception.
It was John Betjeman who was largely responsible for
preventing the demolition of Jericho's quiet,
vernacular architecture, - "unassuming small-scale
Jericho with its myriad streets of modest two-up and
two-down cottages" as his daughter put it recently in
‘The Oldie' - and it was Barbara Castle who stepped
in to prevent the Jericho canal from being filled in
altogether as she was prophetically able to visualise
the Jericho canal's residential and restorative
capability as well as its enduring transport
possibilities.
Oxford is England's Venice, its Florence. Imagine the
authorities in Venice - the Serene Republic - being
presented with Castlemore Securities' Blocks A, B and
C - or Spring Residential's Executive Barracks. They'd
be laughed out of court for hatching something so
inappropriate and might count themselves fortunate not
to find horse's heads on their pillows.
Castlemore have now spent some three years laying
siege to Jericho with one plan or another. All of them
dull if not plug ugly. But if they should have their
way and if Oxford continues to be nibbled away at and
is then finally turned into Brent Cross Shopping
Centre its magic will never come round again.
In 1918 when the poet W.B. Yeats lived here he wrote:
"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream
and
remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost
expects the
people to sing instead of speaking. It is all...like
an opera."
If Yeats could glimpse what Castlemore Securities
have been plotting to plant on Jericho I dare say he
wouldn't be surprised to discover that the Oxford
songbirds of his imagination had now lost their
voices and were falling into a despondent silence.
Why? because Jericho wants its boatyard back.
Heathcote Williams
Philip Pullman's 3rd party statement
downloadable as a mp3 file (3mb) warning: the quality of the recording is poor
And Spring's lawyer Jeremy Cahill's amusing exchange with Philip
downloadable as a mp3 file (2mb) :
Planning meeting Friday 15/8/08
Last year I spoke against the proposal to develop the Castle Mill site, and I want to repeat my opposition now, because as far as I can tell very little has changed.
I have to stress that I am not against development as such. As it stands at the moment, the site is crying out for development. Who could possibly live and work in a place whose owners see fit to surround it with razor wire and shut off any access? Of course it needs development. But it needs development on a human scale and in a manner that matches the nature of the site. Along the canal now, too many stretches of it have become canyons of unsympathetic blocks; the area around the Castle Mill boatyard is one of the few remaining parts that have not been blighted with buildings that are too big, too impersonal, too obstructive. I fear that this plan by Spring will repeat all those faults, and destroy one of the last remaining stretches of rich human complexity in our city. On a site that was already surrounded by modern buildings on that scale, no doubt Spring's plan would fit in perfectly. Here it does not.
I've made this comparison before, in the press, but I think it's worth making again. In the Ashmolean Museum here in Oxford there is a painting by Canaletto of a scene on the Brenta canal near Venice. It shows a lock, boats on the canal, people at work, passers-by stopping to talk, sunlight on trees and water, and even a church in the background with a tower. It's not a grand scene of splendour and magnificence - it's an everyday scene, on a human scale, where everything fits and all these different activities have their place and their dignity and their beauty. That painting is guarded night and day and insured, no doubt, for hundreds of thousands of pounds. It's rightly one of Oxford's treasures.
Yet there, on our canal, in our city, is the living equivalent: the water, the sunlight, the trees, the people at work, the passers-by, the boats, the church with its tower. Are we so careless of what our city possesses that we're willing to guard the painting so diligently, and yet let the reality be wiped out with one stroke of the planners' pen?
This is a small thing for Spring. If they fail here, they won't go out of business: they'll move to another city, find another site worth developing, put in a planning application, and maybe succeed. I don't wish them ill. We need houses and flats. But not this sort of building on this sort of site. We only have one canal, there is only one Castle Mill boatyard - and the boatyard, of course, should be at the heart of whatever development takes place. That's what gives the site its particular nature, just like the workyard in Canaletto's painting. To suggest, in a high-handed sort of way, that the work of the boatyard moves to Yarnton is to say "You don't matter; you're not important to us; we won't make any money out of you."
Ma'am, Oxford is better than that. I urge you to turn down this appeal, and preserve the site for the boatyard and for a genuinely human-scale housing development. Let's look after the real as well as the painted.
Here's Jericho Boatyard barrister, Mark Westmoreland Smith's closing statement
downloadable as a 2.5mb pdf
And Oxford City Council's closing submission by barrister, Douglas Edwards.
downloadable as a 6mb pdf
Jericho Living Heritage closing by barrister, Trevor Standen.
downloadable as a 1.4mb pdf
Spring's closing by their barrister, Jeremy Cahill
downloadable as a 6.2mb pdf
For more detail on the appeal download the Appeal Questionnaire (14 mb)
COMMUNITY PLANNING WORKSHOP
THURSDAY 27 MARCH 7.00-9.00PM
At the Meeting Hall, Friend's Meeting House, 41 St Giles
Hosted by Jericho Community Association and the City Council's Central,
South & West Area Committee
A public workshop to review local priorities in our neighbourhood.
We want your views on the key improvements needed in the area that local
people, local groups, the Area Committee and other organisations can bring
about by working together.
The information from these workshops will be used to update the City
Council's local Area Plan. This plan outlines key improvements in the area,
details of what organisations will be pursuing which goals, and when things
are likely to happen.
You will be sent information before the workshop, listing neighbourhood
issues and challenges, drawn from previous consultations and area plans.
You can see the full Area Plan on the council website at
www.oxford.gov.uk/areaplans
If you, or a member of your group, is able to attend please ring/email
JENNY COLLETT tel. 252791 or jcollett@oxford.gov.uk
Please state whether you live in Jericho or in Holywell / Northern arc of
City Centre.
SPRING APPEAL
St Barnabas Parochial Church Council was informed at its meeting on Thursday
13 March by the solicitors acting for Spring Residential that Spring intend
to proceed with the appeal.
The appeal will be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate at Bristol, who
will set a date for the hearing in from six months to a year's time, most
likely towards the end of this year, in Oxford. The Inspector's decision
could be expected in Spring 2009. Both Spring and the City Council will
appoint a QC.
JCB invites you to...The Secret Cabaret!
Saturday 26th Jan at the Canal Club, Wolvercote
(just along from the Plough Pub)
Delicious Thai Buffet by Sasi from 7-8.30pm
+
Cabaret from 9pm with..
The Atavistic Sound of Bart's didgeridoo
Fabdoodly fiddling from the Amazing Andy Letcher
The mouth-watering humming of Matt Morton's mouth organ
Groovy Jazz Tunes from the Sultry Steph Pirrie
Brilliant Balderdash from the barking Benji Ming
Musical Acrobatics by Ivan Inversion
+ Further Acts to be confirmed...
+
Then for your dancing pleasure...
The Galvanising Rhythms of the genii Gees
+
DJ (to be confirmed)
Only 90 food tickets to go >:-O!
£££££10/£12 to JCB members/non-members - Txt Bruce (07840562782) with your name and 'vegetarian' or 'omnivore' to make sure you're booked in.(Membership available on the door)
££3/£5 entrance to those not eating but preference will be given to those who are: this is a fundraiser after all.
(NB. Prices are slightly higher than last time so we can afford free entrance for artistes and JCB directors as a 'thank you' because they deserve it!)
Book Now or by 24th for a boomshanka boatie night out!
Hosts: Bruce'the breeze'Heagerty
Tuesday 11th December
We are advised that the application will come to an Area Committee on this date; starting at 5:30 pm in the Assembly rooms, Oxford Town Hall.
Please be there at 5pm for a silent demo outside the Town Hall .
Sat. 8 th December
Saturday 8th December - Oxeye Daisy Xmas Party OXE EYE EVENTS
Redox, The G's, Spiderwoods, Cinema, Cafe, In aid of Radley Lakes, Warnford Meadow, Castle Mill Boatyard.
www.oxeye.org.uk / email: mjdmorton@ecocentrus.co.uk / Tel. 01865 721366
6pm till 12:30 £6
East Oxford Community Centre, 44b Princes Street (corner of Cowley Rd), OX4 1DD.
There will be a City Council Area Committee meeting at 5.30 on Tuesday 9th October at St Barnabas School, Jericho.
Although the planning application on Castle Mill is not an Agenda item, the first part of the meeting will be an Open Session where members of the public can raise any matters of concern.
In addition, two British Waterways managers will give a presentation on winter canal maintenance and will be available to answer 'any questions about the canal in Oxford and about future plans'.
Please go if you can
We are having our second Annual General Meeting at the Town Hall in Oxford centre at 7pm on 15th of October. Everyone is invited to hear updates on the campaign for a boatyard and to vote on the new directors. Those people who are not already members can join there and anyone who hasn't yet paid their subscription for this year can pay their £5 on the door when they get their voting slip. Hope to see you there!
This from the July British Waterways Board meeting .
Sunday 27th may 7.30pm East Oxford Community Centre
screening:
The coconut revolution (60min). Following the lives of the people of Bouganville who have claimed independance from papua new Guinea who they have been at war with. Despite a total economic embargo and dangerous lifes these people have survived and created fuel, medecine, oil, from the most abundant resource in the island: coconut.
The battle of the gyptians (23min) - The story of the Castlemill boatyard occupation.
Cost: £ 2.50 . All costs revert to the social club funds.
BOAT SINKS ON CANAL 27th Feb 2007
Fortunately friends were at hand in Daryll White and Peter Darch. Mr Darch
said that the weed hatch can't have been fixed on properly.
The weed hatch is a hatch above the propeller behind the engine that allows
you to remove weeds or anything else that get wrapped around the propeller.
They are usually in the form of a metal plate held down by a metal bar that is
trapped by metal rings. The rings and metal bar weren't there in Claire's
case.
6 months ago Claire's was one of eight boats that was forcibly put back in the
water by British Waterways when their owners occupied Castlemill Boatyard in a
protest against it's closure.
Claire had the bottom of her boat angle-grinded and blacked to protect it. She
was also having the wooden upper sides of her boat replaced.
"I didn't know about the weed hatch being down there" she said. "I was
pregnant at the time with two kids to look after and all I saw were a load of
oil-covered bricks down in the engine room. That must have been what was
holding the hatch down. I couldn't keep my eye on everything that was going on
and a lot of people were helping me with the work I was having done on the
boat. Then British Waterways arrived at dawn with loads of security guards and
put all our boats back in the water."
This is the first time that Claire has made a journey under her own steam
since she was put back in the water. She was on her way to crane her boat out
at Gunpowder Wharf to the north of Oxford so that she could do more work on
her boat but tragically she never made it. When the propeller went round it
splashed water up into the engine and after a while the boat began to sink.
Luckily she and her children were able to get out in time before it sank but
all of their possessions: their clothes, phones, toys, food were all mixed up
in a sodden mess on the boat floor. A lot of other belongings had floated off
down the canal and friends helped her recover them in a motor boat.
British Waterways had promised to come and help her on Wednesday but luckily
Daryll White and Peter Darch were on hand to refloat her boat before they were
needed.
The terrible thing is that if we don't get a boatyard soon, then this kind of
tragedy may not be the last of its kind.
This is the third boat to sink on the Oxford Canal since the closing of their
local boatyard. A lot of people living on the canal can't afford comercial
boatyard prices and would opt to do the work themselves or hire local
craftsmen there. This is why Castlemill Boatyard was so important to the
Oxford boaters: It brought the boating community together with local handymen
who could help with the repairs such as welding, carpentry, engine work,
plumbing etc.
When British Waterways sold Castlemill for real estate they were selling our
community down the river. Castlemill was the hub of the community, where
problems like Claire's were solved before they arose. We no longer have
anywhere like that and boats are beginning to sink because of it.
Here's Heathcote Williams' 3rd party statement
downloadable as a mp3 file (9mb)Jericho's heritage Address delivered to the Town Hall Inquiry
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
I'd like to mention Jericho's heritage, and, of course, everything said here, at this Inquiry, and in particular the Inspector's decision, will all become part of Jericho's heritage in due course.
In his ‘Notes on a Small Island' Bill Bryson implored the Oxford authorities to make no more horrendous planning mistakes. "Oxford," he writes, "is a beautiful city that has been treated with gross indifference and lamentable incompetence for far too long, and every living person in Oxford should feel a little bit ashamed." He goes on to ask "What sort of mad seizure was it that gripped the city's planners, architects and college authorities in the1960s and 1970s? "Did you know", he reveals, "that it was once seriously proposed to tear down Jericho, a district of fine artisans' homes, and to run a bypass right across Christ Church Meadow? These ideas weren't just misguided, they were criminally insane."
Jericho has been continuously inhabited for nearly a thousand years. It lies in the grounds of what was Beaumont Palace where Richard the Lionheart was born in 1157. Ten years later King John was born here - the Palace stood on what is now the corner of Walton Street and Beaumont Street.
Jericho may feel no immediately pressing need to be subjected to a corporate crusade by the mercenaries of the property market who, as we've so often been told by their representatives at this Inquiry, claim to act in the name of progress and in the public interest, yet, on closer inspection we discover it's their own progress and their own interests which they consider paramount.
They appear to regard planning requirements as inconvenient traffic-cones to be brushed aside by hiring clever lawyers - much of whose time here has been taken up with financial matters - namely whether or not their clients paid too much for the privilege of potentially being allowed to ruin a precious and much loved part of Jericho.
Some might consider they could never pay too much for what they are proposing.
On Tuesday last, on the opening day of this Inquiry, one developer was quoted as saying that they didn't like being, I quote, "stung for affordable housing".
The following Tuesday, Castlemore Securities' representative, Mr Cahill, declared that, I quote, "what my clients do with the Jericho land is a matter of economics" and he also referred to, I quote his words again, "having to bear the burden of affordable housing" as if it was an unwelcome encumbrance commonly regarded with distaste in developer circles.
I want to show - and in much greater detail in my fuller submission - that Jericho's heritage represents something quite different from this impoverished mind-set: it's not just about money and Jericho's housing the less well off on its canal in its narrowboats has never been regarded as a "burden." The Jericho boatyard has been here for between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years sustaining narrowboats which have provided low-impact, one hundred-per-cent affordable, socially diverse housing for the canal workers going back to the early nineteenth century - and the days of the Jericho Boatman's Floating Chapel parked just where the Boatyard is - and later for many of Oxford and Jericho's workers and their families over generations and for the genuinely needy.
Jericho's narrowboats represent a life in the slow lane at one remove from life -shortening stresses and economic pressures - Wordsworth's "Getting and spending with which we lay waste our hours." The writer Hugh Massingham wrote that "The culture of the canals is a distinctive section of the English tradition... a way of life that made the England of the spirit". As James Elroy Flecker write of this particular stretch of the canal: "When you have wearied of the valiant spires of this County Town, /Of its wide white streets and glistening museums, and black monastic walls,/ Of its red motors and lumbering trains, and self-sufficient people,/ I will take you walking with me to a place you have not seen/ - Half town and half country-the land of the Canal./ It is dearer to me than the antique town: I love it more than the rounded hills:/ Straightest, sublimest of rivers is the long Canal."
The Jericho Boatyard that served that canal so irreplaceably wasn't closed down for the greater good - namely to house a larger number of homeless people than could be accommodated by the narrowboats - the yard was closed down simply to make money and an integrated community was cruelly ripped apart. Hence the strength of local feeling that's rippled outwards so dramatically. Castlemore Securities' present notion of retaining just four per cent cent of Jericho's land for boats - space, in fact, for just one token boat - adds a mean-minded insult to an already outrageous injury to the generous ancestral spirit of Jericho.
St Ebbe's is gone for good, its cattle market and its picaresque pubs and its Paradise Square - like a little fan-tailed Georgian Square in Dublin -was swapped for grey municipal concourses and gruesome multi-levelled car-parks to the chagrin of those who knew it as it was. Ironically as it happens some of these very buildings in their turn are shortly to be removed - a mere forty years after their ill-judged conception.
It was John Betjeman who was largely responsible for preventing the demolition of Jericho's quiet, vernacular architecture, - "unassuming small-scale Jericho with its myriad streets of modest two-up and two-down cottages" as his daughter put it recently in ‘The Oldie' - and it was Barbara Castle who stepped in to prevent the Jericho canal from being filled in altogether as she was prophetically able to visualise the Jericho canal's residential and restorative capability as well as its enduring transport possibilities.
Oxford is England's Venice, its Florence. Imagine the authorities in Venice - the Serene Republic - being presented with Castlemore Securities' Blocks A, B and C - or Spring Residential's Executive Barracks. They'd be laughed out of court for hatching something so inappropriate and might count themselves fortunate not to find horse's heads on their pillows. Castlemore have now spent some three years laying siege to Jericho with one plan or another. All of them dull if not plug ugly. But if they should have their way and if Oxford continues to be nibbled away at and is then finally turned into Brent Cross Shopping Centre its magic will never come round again. In 1918 when the poet W.B. Yeats lived here he wrote:
"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all...like an opera."
If Yeats could glimpse what Castlemore Securities have been plotting to plant on Jericho I dare say he wouldn't be surprised to discover that the Oxford songbirds of his imagination had now lost their voices and were falling into a despondent silence. Why? because Jericho wants its boatyard back.
Heathcote Williams
Philip Pullman's 3rd party statement
downloadable as a mp3 file (3mb) warning: the quality of the recording is poor
And Spring's lawyer Jeremy Cahill's amusing exchange with Philip
downloadable as a mp3 file (2mb) :
Planning meeting Friday 15/8/08
Last year I spoke against the proposal to develop the Castle Mill site, and I want to repeat my opposition now, because as far as I can tell very little has changed.
I have to stress that I am not against development as such. As it stands at the moment, the site is crying out for development. Who could possibly live and work in a place whose owners see fit to surround it with razor wire and shut off any access? Of course it needs development. But it needs development on a human scale and in a manner that matches the nature of the site. Along the canal now, too many stretches of it have become canyons of unsympathetic blocks; the area around the Castle Mill boatyard is one of the few remaining parts that have not been blighted with buildings that are too big, too impersonal, too obstructive. I fear that this plan by Spring will repeat all those faults, and destroy one of the last remaining stretches of rich human complexity in our city. On a site that was already surrounded by modern buildings on that scale, no doubt Spring's plan would fit in perfectly. Here it does not.
I've made this comparison before, in the press, but I think it's worth making again. In the Ashmolean Museum here in Oxford there is a painting by Canaletto of a scene on the Brenta canal near Venice. It shows a lock, boats on the canal, people at work, passers-by stopping to talk, sunlight on trees and water, and even a church in the background with a tower. It's not a grand scene of splendour and magnificence - it's an everyday scene, on a human scale, where everything fits and all these different activities have their place and their dignity and their beauty. That painting is guarded night and day and insured, no doubt, for hundreds of thousands of pounds. It's rightly one of Oxford's treasures.
Yet there, on our canal, in our city, is the living equivalent: the water, the sunlight, the trees, the people at work, the passers-by, the boats, the church with its tower. Are we so careless of what our city possesses that we're willing to guard the painting so diligently, and yet let the reality be wiped out with one stroke of the planners' pen?
This is a small thing for Spring. If they fail here, they won't go out of business: they'll move to another city, find another site worth developing, put in a planning application, and maybe succeed. I don't wish them ill. We need houses and flats. But not this sort of building on this sort of site. We only have one canal, there is only one Castle Mill boatyard - and the boatyard, of course, should be at the heart of whatever development takes place. That's what gives the site its particular nature, just like the workyard in Canaletto's painting. To suggest, in a high-handed sort of way, that the work of the boatyard moves to Yarnton is to say "You don't matter; you're not important to us; we won't make any money out of you."
Ma'am, Oxford is better than that. I urge you to turn down this appeal, and preserve the site for the boatyard and for a genuinely human-scale housing development. Let's look after the real as well as the painted.
Here's Jericho Boatyard barrister, Mark Westmoreland Smith's closing statement
downloadable as a 2.5mb pdf
And Oxford City Council's closing submission by barrister, Douglas Edwards.
downloadable as a 6mb pdf
Jericho Living Heritage closing by barrister, Trevor Standen.
downloadable as a 1.4mb pdf
Spring's closing by their barrister, Jeremy Cahill
downloadable as a 6.2mb pdf
For more detail on the appeal download the Appeal Questionnaire (14 mb)
COMMUNITY PLANNING WORKSHOP
THURSDAY 27 MARCH 7.00-9.00PM
At the Meeting Hall, Friend's Meeting House, 41 St Giles
Hosted by Jericho Community Association and the City Council's Central,
South & West Area Committee
A public workshop to review local priorities in our neighbourhood.
We want your views on the key improvements needed in the area that local
people, local groups, the Area Committee and other organisations can bring
about by working together.
The information from these workshops will be used to update the City
Council's local Area Plan. This plan outlines key improvements in the area,
details of what organisations will be pursuing which goals, and when things
are likely to happen.
You will be sent information before the workshop, listing neighbourhood
issues and challenges, drawn from previous consultations and area plans.
You can see the full Area Plan on the council website at
www.oxford.gov.uk/areaplans
If you, or a member of your group, is able to attend please ring/email
JENNY COLLETT tel. 252791 or jcollett@oxford.gov.uk
Please state whether you live in Jericho or in Holywell / Northern arc of
City Centre.
SPRING APPEAL
St Barnabas Parochial Church Council was informed at its meeting on Thursday
13 March by the solicitors acting for Spring Residential that Spring intend
to proceed with the appeal.
The appeal will be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate at Bristol, who
will set a date for the hearing in from six months to a year's time, most
likely towards the end of this year, in Oxford. The Inspector's decision
could be expected in Spring 2009. Both Spring and the City Council will
appoint a QC.
JCB invites you to...The Secret Cabaret!
Saturday 26th Jan at the Canal Club, Wolvercote
(just along from the Plough Pub)
Delicious Thai Buffet by Sasi from 7-8.30pm
+
Cabaret from 9pm with..
The Atavistic Sound of Bart's didgeridoo
Fabdoodly fiddling from the Amazing Andy Letcher
The mouth-watering humming of Matt Morton's mouth organ
Groovy Jazz Tunes from the Sultry Steph Pirrie
Brilliant Balderdash from the barking Benji Ming
Musical Acrobatics by Ivan Inversion
+ Further Acts to be confirmed...
+
Then for your dancing pleasure...
The Galvanising Rhythms of the genii Gees
+
DJ (to be confirmed)
Only 90 food tickets to go >:-O!
£££££10/£12 to JCB members/non-members - Txt Bruce (07840562782) with your name and 'vegetarian' or 'omnivore' to make sure you're booked in.(Membership available on the door)
££3/£5 entrance to those not eating but preference will be given to those who are: this is a fundraiser after all.
(NB. Prices are slightly higher than last time so we can afford free entrance for artistes and JCB directors as a 'thank you' because they deserve it!)
Book Now or by 24th for a boomshanka boatie night out!
Hosts: Bruce'the breeze'Heagerty
Tuesday 11th December
We are advised that the application will come to an Area Committee on this date; starting at 5:30 pm in the Assembly rooms, Oxford Town Hall.
Please be there at 5pm for a silent demo outside the Town Hall .
Sat. 8 th December
Saturday 8th December - Oxeye Daisy Xmas Party OXE EYE EVENTS
Redox, The G's, Spiderwoods, Cinema, Cafe, In aid of Radley Lakes, Warnford Meadow, Castle Mill Boatyard.
www.oxeye.org.uk / email: mjdmorton@ecocentrus.co.uk / Tel. 01865 721366
6pm till 12:30 £6
East Oxford Community Centre, 44b Princes Street (corner of Cowley Rd), OX4 1DD.
There will be a City Council Area Committee meeting at 5.30 on Tuesday 9th October at St Barnabas School, Jericho.
Although the planning application on Castle Mill is not an Agenda item, the first part of the meeting will be an Open Session where members of the public can raise any matters of concern.
In addition, two British Waterways managers will give a presentation on winter canal maintenance and will be available to answer 'any questions about the canal in Oxford and about future plans'.
Please go if you can
We are having our second Annual General Meeting at the Town Hall in Oxford centre at 7pm on 15th of October. Everyone is invited to hear updates on the campaign for a boatyard and to vote on the new directors. Those people who are not already members can join there and anyone who hasn't yet paid their subscription for this year can pay their £5 on the door when they get their voting slip. Hope to see you there!
This from the July British Waterways Board meeting .
Sunday 27th may 7.30pm East Oxford Community Centre
screening:
The coconut revolution (60min). Following the lives of the people of Bouganville who have claimed independance from papua new Guinea who they have been at war with. Despite a total economic embargo and dangerous lifes these people have survived and created fuel, medecine, oil, from the most abundant resource in the island: coconut.
The battle of the gyptians (23min) - The story of the Castlemill boatyard occupation.
Cost: £ 2.50 . All costs revert to the social club funds.
BOAT SINKS ON CANAL 27th Feb 2007
Fortunately friends were at hand in Daryll White and Peter Darch. Mr Darch
said that the weed hatch can't have been fixed on properly.
The weed hatch is a hatch above the propeller behind the engine that allows
you to remove weeds or anything else that get wrapped around the propeller.
They are usually in the form of a metal plate held down by a metal bar that is
trapped by metal rings. The rings and metal bar weren't there in Claire's
case.
6 months ago Claire's was one of eight boats that was forcibly put back in the
water by British Waterways when their owners occupied Castlemill Boatyard in a
protest against it's closure.
Claire had the bottom of her boat angle-grinded and blacked to protect it. She
was also having the wooden upper sides of her boat replaced.
"I didn't know about the weed hatch being down there" she said. "I was
pregnant at the time with two kids to look after and all I saw were a load of
oil-covered bricks down in the engine room. That must have been what was
holding the hatch down. I couldn't keep my eye on everything that was going on
and a lot of people were helping me with the work I was having done on the
boat. Then British Waterways arrived at dawn with loads of security guards and
put all our boats back in the water."
This is the first time that Claire has made a journey under her own steam
since she was put back in the water. She was on her way to crane her boat out
at Gunpowder Wharf to the north of Oxford so that she could do more work on
her boat but tragically she never made it. When the propeller went round it
splashed water up into the engine and after a while the boat began to sink.
Luckily she and her children were able to get out in time before it sank but
all of their possessions: their clothes, phones, toys, food were all mixed up
in a sodden mess on the boat floor. A lot of other belongings had floated off
down the canal and friends helped her recover them in a motor boat.
British Waterways had promised to come and help her on Wednesday but luckily
Daryll White and Peter Darch were on hand to refloat her boat before they were
needed.
The terrible thing is that if we don't get a boatyard soon, then this kind of
tragedy may not be the last of its kind.
This is the third boat to sink on the Oxford Canal since the closing of their
local boatyard. A lot of people living on the canal can't afford comercial
boatyard prices and would opt to do the work themselves or hire local
craftsmen there. This is why Castlemill Boatyard was so important to the
Oxford boaters: It brought the boating community together with local handymen
who could help with the repairs such as welding, carpentry, engine work,
plumbing etc.
When British Waterways sold Castlemill for real estate they were selling our
community down the river. Castlemill was the hub of the community, where
problems like Claire's were solved before they arose. We no longer have
anywhere like that and boats are beginning to sink because of it.
downloadable as a 2.5mb pdf
downloadable as a 6mb pdf
downloadable as a 1.4mb pdf
downloadable as a 6.2mb pdf
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