HisDarkMaterials.org

I love the curious and indeed somewhat gamy character of Jericho and the Oxford canal; it's always seemed to me like a window opening on a quite different world from the academic propriety of its near neighbour, north Oxford. It's a watery, raffish, amiable, trickster-like world of boat-dwellers, horse-dealers and alchemists. The character of this part of Oxford is very ancient, quite unmistakable, entirely unique, and now, alas, in some peril.

It would be very easy to damage it by carelessly allowing inappropriate development. It's obvious that some changes are inevitable, and indeed necessary, but above all we should try to retain the rich mix of things that have built themselves up over the centuries. To turn a living, active, mixed and working community into yet another bland and corporate dormitory would be a crime against civilized living.

And Jericho is full of ghosts. Mischievous and benign, for the most part. For howling nuns and shrieking skulls, look to Godstow or Cumnor; for dismembered corpses and insane and malevolent dons, look to Broad Street and points south. The ghosts of Jericho are the sort that would buy you a pint and pull your leg and pick your pocket and leave you feeling all the better for it.

But they are beginning to mutter, in their ivy-strangled graveyards and on the moon-drenched steppes of Port Meadow; they are whispering together under the water and in the cellars. And I wouldn't be in the shoes of any developer who failed to pay the ghosts of Jericho proper attention and respect. The same attention, in fact, that they should pay to the living residents.

We don't need or want Jericho to become a museum. But nor should it be a machine for making money. There are some developments that not even a ghost could bear to live in.

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