Oxford City Conservatives

Most of the established, character-forming housing stock of Jericho was constructed in the19th Century and was predominantly artisan housing. The neighbourhood developed further following the construction of the Oxford Canal (1790), the building of the Jericho Iron and Brass Foundry, later Lucy's and now a prestige apartment complex (1825), and the arrival of Oxford University Press (1826). The housing consisted of small, basic dwellings, lacking even basic drainage. As a result most of Jericho was little more than a squalid slum and vulnerable to outbreaks of cholera. The worst area was a block of small houses behind the Jericho House (now the Jericho Tavern) in an area called Jericho Gardens, now the site of St Barnabus Primary School.

Initially, building was only possible on the higher land closer to Walton Street. It was only after the 1860s, as the land closer to the canal was steadily drained, that the area below Albert Street was developed. This included the building on Canal Street of St. Barnabas Church (1870)— whose arrival provided some moral uplift and started to dispel the area's sordid reputation. A lot of the housing was, and remains, two-up, two-

down terraced housing, built by speculators or by landlords such as St. John's College or Lucy's.

Jericho faced a major crisis in the 1960s with proposals to demolish most of the fairly dilapidated houses and turn the area over to commercial offices, light industry and an urban motorway. While some of the housing by then was too far gone and had to be destroyed, most of the area was saved and renovated. As a result of its convenient location close to the city centre, Jericho has now become a desirable area for young professional people, though it also retains many residents who have spent all their lives here.

Osney
Osney Town (also known as Osney Island) is a riverside community in the west of the city of Oxford, located off Botley Road. The conservation area lies on an island at a point where the River Thames splits into several channels.

Osney Town was laid out in 1851 by GP Hester, Town Clerk, who acquired the land from Christ Church College and laid out the streets as they appear today. Most of Osney’s 300 households live in 19th century terraces cottages, built on Hester’s original grid plan, contributing to the special character of the conservation area.

Osney Abbey, once one of Oxford’s most important religious institutions, was located on the opposite (eastern) bank of the Thames from the island, in the area now known as New Osney. The only visible remains of the abbey complex is one small building, thought to be a surviving bay of one of the ancillary domestic agricultural buildings.

Binsey
Binsey is a small village on the banks of the Thames. The village is discrete, separated from the rest of the urban district by countryside, but within the boundaries of the City of Oxford. It is the other side of the River Thames from Port Meadow, and a couple of miles south-west from the remains of Godstow priory.

Binsey is known for its most famous feature, the church of St Margaret, set at some distance north from the surviving houses. Its fame lies mostly in that, just outside its west end and belltower, stands the model for Lewis Carroll's Treacle Well from Alice in Wonderland; this is a holy well dedicated to St Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford. She had fled to Binsey in a bid to escape marriage to a king of Mercia, whose pursuit of her was halted when he was struck blind at the gates of Oxford. Frideswide's prayers brought forth a healing spring, whose waters cured his blindness, and the spring was walled into a shallow well which became something of a focus for pilgrimage, the mediaeval sense of the word 'treacle' meaning 'healing unguent'.

The reason for the apparent separation of church and village is revealed best from the air; crop-marks show the floor-plans of houses that lay along the straight road that runs between them, suggesting a much larger village during the mediaeval period, or possibly one that has 'migrated' south.

The village and its associated farmland belonged to St Frideswide's Priory during the 14th and 15th centuries, until the Priory's dissolution and (apparently) incorporation into Christ Church, a college of Oxford University.

Jericho & Osney Ward: The Issues

The boat yard and its proposed redevelopment in Jericho continues to provide the focus for much of the community action in Jericho. The closure of local corner pubs and the large scale re-evelopment of the Lucy Factory also cause much local public concern. Jericho resident, Dr. Frances Kennett hit the headlines when she refused to pay her Council Tax because of rat infestations and the imposition of Alternate Weekly Collections of re-cyclates and landfill waste.

In Osney the overwhelming issue is flooding but residents are also concerned about additional large retail unit construction in the area and traffic congestion on the Botley Road. Speeding, Drug dealing, Criminal damage and graffiti remain top of residents' concerns.


		Oxford City Conservatives

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