‘Good God!’ said Peter, suddenly.
He peered with an air of alarm into the dark green water. A string of oily bubbles floated slowly to the surface, showing where the pole had struck a patch of mud; and at the same time their nostrils were assaulted by a loathsome stench of decay.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve struck something horrible. Can’t you smell it? It’s scandalous the way corpses pursue me about. Honestly, Harriet …’
His eye followed her pointing hand to the farther bank, where a cloud of flies circled about a horrid mound of putrefaction.
————
Lord Peter Wimsey’s excremental encounter with the Corporation of Oxford outflow pipe is imprinted forever on the minds and nostrils of all readers of Dorothy L Sayers’ book Gaudy Night (1935). It reminds us of a time when the flood meadow known as Aston’s Eyot was strewn with rusting metal, shards of glass, and mouldering debris of all sorts, while beside it raw sewage was pumped straight into the river …
No longer.
It has been transformed. An energetic and committed group of Friends now looks after it. Children visit it for school nature trips. Families picnic there. Small patches of vegetation have been adopted by ‘Wild Flower Champions’ whose mission is to increase the proportion and variety of rare and nectar-rich plants. Its website proclaims it ‘a great place for a quiet stroll, dog walking, running, harvesting wild fruit, picnicking by the river, and watching wildlife.’ It is a 33-acre island of possibility and hope.
And it’s not alone. The nearby area known as The Kidneys has also been turned into a haven for nature. Further upstream, Grandpont Nature Reserve has been rescued from its place in the historic shadow of the gasometer and the overspill from railway sidings. North, on land adjoining the canal, is the green oasis known as The Trap Grounds, which was used as a rubbish dump for more than a hundred years …
And, most spectacularly of all, fringing the eastern flank of Port Meadow is Burgess Field.
Older locals can still recall a time when trucks and lorries would plough across this corner of Port Meadow to offload their putrid cargo. Rubbish was once dumped here on an industrial scale: some seventy-five acres of it – over three million square feet! So much in fact that the land was raised by several metres above its original height.
Now, under the patient guidance of Richard Gordon and his team of dedicated Friends, it is beginning to flourish once again, to become a rich wildlife habitat, a haven of biodiversity. Trees have been planted, and, all around them, snowdrops, native bluebells, and wood anemones. Hedges have been laid …
… and nettles and brambles have been removed, to be replaced by wildflowers with beautifully evocative names:
corncockle, viper’s bugloss, meadow vetchling, black medick,
wild clary, glaucous sedge, selfheal, musk mallow, bulbous
buttercup, ploughman’s spikenard, cat’s ear
In 2023, 39 different varieties were counted.* A year later the figure has risen to sixty, not to mention numerous wild grasses (Yorkshire Fog, Lesser Cat’s Tail …) And at least 27 species of bird now nest here – including blackcaps, linnets, swifts and woodpeckers.
So it’s possible. A giant, sprawling, polluted midden can be returned to greenness. Festering garbage dumps can be transformed into places of beauty, tranquillity and recreation for all to enjoy. A ‘Nature Recovery Network’ (NRN) has sprung into being to support these initiatives. And last year the University set up a new Research Centre, bringing together expertise from multiple disciplines to ‘understand and support what it takes to deliver effective, inclusive, and scalable nature recovery’.
But, before we get too carried away with all this bucolic bliss, let us turn to a darker story:
For, on the very same day that we received an upbeat newsletter from the Friends of Burgess Field, our attention was drawn to a petition (bearing over sixty thousand signatures) to save the ancient Horse Fields of Iffley Village. These are meadowlands older than Domesday, never ploughed, rich in wildlife, a natural store for carbon and ground water. They sit at the very heart of the village, a green oasis loved and valued by the countless residents and visitors who walk, cycle or ride along the ancient drovers’ routes at their border. The very name Iffley is said to be derived from a Saxon word Givetelei meaning ‘Meadow of Gifts’. A mere four acres remain of the original twenty – and now even this sanctuary and once safe ‘conservation area’ is under threat.
It’s just one of a series of schemes in current-day Oxford as City and University engage in a seemingly inexhaustible drive for expansion. We can all see it and feel it. The concrete and the clay. The green turning to grey. Even as we write, the diggers are amassing a horizon-busting, road-choking ‘tech park’ in ‘Oxford North’, and the lovely, low-hilled skyline above Barton has been hidden for ever behind buildings of soul-destroying banality (which simply don’t belong there and despite this land being designated as Green Belt.)
What’s the solution? One answer seems clear: Create so much pollution that human habitation becomes impossible and too expensive for even the most rapacious of property developers to remediate. Leave it alone to fester for a few decades. Then bring in a team of caring and dedicated volunteers who aren’t motivated by short-termism and financial gain, to make it a beautiful, happy, thriving place once more: a gift to the children now and for the future.
* A list of flowers found on a visit to Burgess Field in 2023:
Teazel
Greater Mullein
Ploughman’s Spikenard
Mignonette
Creeping cinquefoil
Spear thistle
Welted thistle
Wild lettuce
Ox Eye daisy
Lady’s bedstraw
Common knapweed
Red Bartsia
Smooth hawksbeard
Red deadnettle
Bird’s foot trefoil
Yarrow
Amphibious bistort
Meadowsweet
Ragwort
Musk mallow
Creeping thistle
Cranesbill
Wild carrot
Poppy
Viper’s Bugloss
Selfheal
Marjoram
Red Campion
White Campion
Ground ivy
Weld
Perforate St John’s Wort
Corncockle
Burdock
Wild basil
Broad leaved dock
Hogweed
Common mallow
Germander speedwell
Photographic gifts from Clare Brant, Corinne Richards, Duncan Taylor, Evelyn Sanderson, Merlin Matthews
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Camilla Lambrick is one of our most knowledgeable botanists, and co-author of Oxfordshire’s Threatened Plants. We were privileged recently to accompany her on a floral tour of Burgess Field, and to visit her at her home on Boar’s Hill where she lovingly propagates wildflower cuttings.
Since its foundation in 1927, Oxford Preservation Trust has acquired – through purchase, gift or bequest – pockets of land amounting to approximately a thousand acres, which it manages on behalf of the public. Hannah Brockwell is its Green Spaces Officer. She writes:
Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT), an independent charity, is no stranger to the potential of a rubbish dump. In 2006 it was bequeathed a field at Heyford, on the eastern bank of the Thames near Sandford. It took five years to remove 250 tonnes of waste, including tractors, rail wagons and six boats. After more than a decade’s hard work by a team of OPT’s dedicated volunteers, this beautiful place is now a nature reserve, combining meadow, wetland and woodland. Careful management of the grassland, by cutting and baling twice a year, has seen the return of rarer meadow flowers such as snake’s head fritillaries. It is open to the public at all times.
Heyford Meadow is just one of many beautiful green spaces cared for by OPT for the benefit of the public. Across the river at Kennington the charity maintains a large area of floodplain meadow enjoyed by walkers and cyclists. At Marston it looks after a series of meadows along the banks of the Cherwell. Here, you can find rare wildflowers like Great Burnet and Tubular Water Dropwort. OPT’s meadow at Hinksey is a survival of the most ancient floodplain habitat, with a richly diverse array of wildflowers and plants. Only about 2000 hectares of such floodplain meadows survive in the UK. Hinksey Meadow will be partly destroyed if the Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme goes ahead.
These precious plant communities, dramatically floral in midsummer and a magnet for pollinating insects, have declined by at least 97% since the Second World War. They need careful management, including regular flooding, a hay-cut and aftermath grazing. Oxford Preservation Trust is committed to conserving these precious places and making them freely accessible for everyone to enjoy.
These magnificent photographs of Burgess Field come from Diarmaid Macculloch, one of Oxford’s most distinguished scholars, who finds inspiration in this quiet place:
Catherine Robinson is Secretary of The Friends of The Trap Grounds, and the force behind its glorious transformation. She writes:
At The Trap Grounds we take as our motto the words of David Lindo, the Urban Birder: ‘Find a place to love – and then love it’. As Lindo (a self-taught ornithologist with a passion for bird-watching in places like car parks, football stadiums, and railway sidings) is fond of saying, ‘Sometimes you don’t have to be in the middle of nowhere, as fascinating species can be found in the middle of somewhere’ (The Urban Birder World – Wildlife where you least expect it!) I can say Amen to that, having had the privilege of seeing Tawny Owls and Great Crested Grebes at Aston’s Eyot, hearing a Wood Warbler and a Grasshopper Warbler on Burgess Field, and getting rare glimpses of Waxwings and Firecrests at the Trap Grounds. Truly, the value of such post-industrial sites should never be under-estimated.
This is what The Trap Grounds looked like in 2008:
Joanna Innes has written about Dumps for her blog, Life in the Floodplain. It is the most downloaded of all her articles and is full of fascinating detail: https://jminnes.wordpress.com/2020/07/05/dumps/comment-page-1/
Stephanie Jenkins writes:
The beautiful Lye Valley in Headington was once a rubbish tip too: https://www.friendsoflyevalley.org.uk/history/dump_to_heritage_site.html
Evelyn Sanderson, from Iffley Village, writes:
Thank you for highlighting the campaign to save the ancient meadows in Iffley Village, which have amazing biodiversity and qualify as an Urban Wildlife Site. The campaign to save them has managed to delay development plans for this publicly owned land for the last five years and we are looking to get another 1000 objections to the second planning consultation which is expected in September. Please encourage readers of Morris Oxford to sign up to our mailing list and help save this irreplaceable habitat: https://iffleywoods.org/get-involved/
Only One Oxford is a coalition of community campaigns protecting green spaces under threat. It is asking Oxford City Council to prioritise the development of truly affordable homes on already used land, and to make use of vacant buildings, in order save the green lungs of our city for nature to thrive: https://www.onlyoneoxford.com/
Bruce Hugman is dedicated to saving Grandpont Nature Park. He writes:
Almost three months after awarding themselves planning permission for their own plan, the City Council posted their ‘notice of decision’ formalising their intentions. This means the Oxpens River Bridge and associated destruction in the Nature Park and Oxpens Meadow can now go ahead with its massive loss of trees.
Earlier in the year six mature trees on the south bank were felled without a Forestry Commission license and more would have been illegally cut down had local campaigners not safeguarded them. On the north bank, willows were coppiced within an inch of their lives.
The City Councillor leading the push for the bridge, Anna Railton, promised that no work would start until the deadline for launching a judicial review – six weeks after the posting of the decision notice – had passed. It now looks as though an expensive and time-consuming judicial review is the only remaining hope and the group will be launching an urgent campaign to raise the considerable sums needed to fund it. There is deep local opposition to destruction of this lovely riverside woodland.
Camilla Burrow, Chief Executive of Wild Oxfordshire, writes:
97% of the UK’s species-rich grasslands have been lost since the 1930s. We need to reverse this decline and connect the remaining areas of grasslands to ensure our well-being and survival. People across Oxfordshire have the potential to create and manage more biodiverse grasslands in local green spaces, but they often lack knowledge of and confidence about where to start. Wild Oxfordshire’s Community Ecology Programme empowers people to act for nature, with huge benefits for both people and nature.
For more information see: https://www.wildoxfordshire.org.uk/
Mention of ‘the Concrete and the Clay’ brought to Philip Hunt’s mind this priceless video from 1965, set against the backdrop of the Barbican building site: a vision for all of us to ponder:
It’s not all bad. Edward Milford, a long-time supporter of the Green Party, draws our attention to the 2024 ENDS (Environmental Data Services) survey which reminds us that, for all the recent affronts, Oxford is still England’s greenest city.
Oxford has retained its position as the greenest city in England, according to an in-depth analysis of environmental data, which places the city at the top of a ranking of the country’s 55 largest urban centres.
In ENDS’ Green Cities Index, England’s 55 primary urban areas are ranked according to more than thirty environmental factors grouped into five categories – public realm, green behaviour, air quality, climate and water quality.
Oxford was ranked top of the index’s green behaviour category and also ranked highly on public realm. The data shows that it continues to have one of the highest recycling rates in the country and is among the top ten cities with the closest access to public green space. It registered the largest proportion of adults who do any cycling or walking, for any purpose (at least five times per week). It has the sixth highest number of electric vehicle-charging devices per 100,000 people and also recorded the second highest proportion of residents commuting to work by bike and the third highest travelling to work on foot.
We can’t help noticing that the chief executive of Oxford City Council is called Caroline Green! She commented:
Oxford has some wonderful green spaces, parks, meadows and rivers which we are determined to protect and enhance for the benefit of residents and visitors.
Writing in Visions, the Oxford Civic Society Newsletter, Chris Church concludes:
We are not seeing joined-up thinking. If a nature strategy for Oxford is to do more than protect a limited number of key sites, it will need to be fully engaged with the development planning processes that are putting so much pressure on our green spaces. We need real planning for nature that goes beyond token ‘biodiversity net gain’ and a few trees next to new housing.
