Headington Headlines #80

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 1 – 7 October —

There was a suspected arson attack early on Tuesday morning at Foresters Tower in Wood Farm. Two men were later arrested and have been released on bail.

Tuesday also saw low water pressure affecting the Quarry area yet again.

If you didn’t apply by Friday it’s now too late to enter for Step Dance School’s Headington Goes Strictly. Learn to dance in a day, show off your moves in the final competition on 17 November. Tickets available.

@nickyloymusic witnessed her neighbours thwarting a bike theft in Lime Walk. They accosted the would-be thief and called the police who marched the hapless youth off in handcuffs.

RH Transport, operators of the 700 hospital service, other routes and school buses, ceased operations without warning on Thursday. The County Council has arranged for new operators to run services from today (Monday).

Abacus College, currently based in George Street, has applied for change-of-use planning permission to allow them to move into the offices above Londis. There’s more information on the e-dem forum and you can see the planning application here.

David Cameron visited the JR Hospital on Saturday.

My favorite Headington-related tweet this week:

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • 7 Stephen Road
  • Thornhill Park & Ride: proposed charges for 11+ hours
  • 700 Not In Smart Zone
  • Abacus College hopes to move to Headington
I try to cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.

Headington Headlines #79

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 24 – 30 September —

A meeting of the North-East Area Forum focussing on the Oxford City Cycle Plan was held on Monday 24 September.

Martin Young’s appeal on 29 Old High Street was dismissed and the city council was awarded costs.

@thrivebarton‘s fundraising Allotment Dinner was reported in the Oxford Mail. MP Andrew Smith attended in support.

Greenpeace posted a video on their facebook page of last Saturday’s protest outside the Shell petrol station on the London Road. My tweeted link didn’t work; this one does.

The public consultation on @WindmillOxford‘s plan to become three-form entry is open until 22 October. The County’s School Organisation & Planning Officer says

“The county council wish as many parents of preschool children as possible in the Headington area to be aware of this, as obviously it will affect numbers of children able to be admitted to the school in future years. All details on the site above.”

Water supplies in Risinghurst were interrupted for a few hours on Wednesday morning, apparently due to a problem with the pumps. About 100 properties were said to have been affected.

There was a burglary in Trafford Road, Headington on Wednesday. 3 laptops, jewellery and a camera were stolen.

EF language school @EFOxford joined twitter in August but I only found out about it when @headingtonnews tweeted their name. I hope this might lead to the school interacting more with the local community – something I’ve written about before (here and here) – but so far they haven’t been very active and their tweets have been limited to student-oriented matters.

Ruskin College have finally moved out of their Walton Street site and are now 100% Headington based in advance of the official opening of the new buildings which I think is on 27 October.

I wrote a short blog article (with pictures) about the appearance of the new Dorset House.

A Forum on education policy in Oxfordshire was held in New Marston Primary School on Thursday. Leader of Oxon CC @Ian Hudspeth and Melinda Tilley (of whom I have spoken before) were there.

My favorite Headington-related tweet this week:

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • Problems with cycling provision
  • Litter bin in Bury Knowle Park that (or which) sends emails
  • Proposed Changes To Holy Trinity Church
I try to cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.

Dorset House

TonyOX3

So now Dorset House is finally open in its new incarnation what do we think of it? Here are my thoughts.

Although it’s a modern modular construction with all the student rooms prefabricated and delivered to site ready to drop into position, I think it looks quite good. From the London Road the four stories don’t look overbearing and I like the way Berkeley have kept the trees to soften the appearance of the buildings. The stone facings in yellow brick, or honey-coloured if you prefer, continue the Oxford tradition although rejecting the redbrick of the previous building. Cost saving is evident though in the standard off-the-shelf landscaping features such as the pathway lighting posts.

My main quibble is the use of wooden strip cladding on some of the facings. While I think this Scandinavian styling is well-suited to a woodland or forested setting it doesn’t work for me in a suburban city environment. The mix of vertical and horizontal strips is particularly messy: it might be justified if there were a need to distinguish buildings with different functions, but as far as I can see this isn’t the case here. It smacks of the cheap pastiche approach often seen in buildings from large-scale developers and I think the whole ensemble would look better if the brick facing had been used throughout. However, the wooden strips will weather (in fact they already seem to be changing colour) and the weathering will be different on different aspects so we must wait and see how the whole development looks in a few years time.

On balance I think it works reasonably well and I’ll look forward to seeing how it matures.