North Oxford is celebrated in fiction, not least in Barbara Pym’s Crampton Hodnet, which opens with Miss Morrow sitting in a dark house wondering whether she ‘might even take pleasure in its gloominess and curiously Gothic quality’.

It is also is the only suburb which is the subject of a full-scale academic study, by Tanis Hinchcliffe (Yale University Press, 1992).

However, like any sought-after residential area, it has always been prey not just to developers, but to ambitious owners.

In the 1960s its future seemed doubtful. The Victorian Group of the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society was founded in 1966 by the redoubtable Mrs Catherine Cole, of Norham Road, in order to defend the suburb.

The reality of the threat was shown by the loss of some of the best houses, usually replaced by hideous blocks of flats.

Some protection was at last provided after the Civic Amenities Act of 1967 brought in conservation areas.

North Oxford has benefited in stages (from 1968 to 1976). The most obvious result has been that only one house has since been demolished in the area, though applications have been made to demolish others.

However, the protection afforded is limited. Permitted development includes replacement plastic windows (the first appeared on a house belonging to Christ Church), and the demolition of such features as porches and conservatories. These are particularly at risk, and we have lost several fine ones recently, such as that at 34 Leckford Road.

There is a solution to this problem, the introduction of ‘Article 4 Directions’, which remove specified permitted development rights.

The Victorian Group has been urging the city council to apply them to North Oxford ever since they came into existence.

The council’s officers began by claiming that they were impossibly difficult to introduce and enforce, but eventually agreed to try them out in Osney Island, as being a compact and small conservation area.

Since they proved successful there, we have repeatedly pressed for their introduction in North Oxford, without success.

When the Jericho conservation area was designated in 2011, Article 4 Directions were added from the start. Why not North Oxford?

That is not all that North Oxford lacks.

Every local authority has been obliged since 1990 to produce an ‘appraisal’ for each conservation area, to guide decisions.

That for North Oxford has been through two consultations, but is still only in draft. Something happened between the two drafts, in that a revision made it much more favourable to the principle of extending houses. This is probably the biggest single threat to the area.

Successive planning inspectors, in their judgments on appeals, have strongly supported our view that the gaps between the houses are as important as the houses themselves, but officers constantly approve applications which block them. The Middle Eastern Centre proposal is a striking case in point.

The situation is exacerbated by the circumstance that there is so much money around in North Oxford. Houses sell for crazy prices, and the owners are often not content just to return even the largest houses to single occupation, but want to make large additions for gyms, swimming pools and the like. When the Oxford List of Buildings of Special Architectural and Historic Interest was last fully revised in 1972, hardly any buildings in North Oxford were included, and not a single Gothic house.

After many years of pressure from the Victorian Group, the North Oxford list was revised in 2008, but the result was disappointing, as only half of the houses recommended by the reviewing inspector were listed.

Another blow was the recent abolition of the north srea planning committee, which had often showed itself more sensitive to the issues of North Oxford than the council’s planning officers. The local committees have now been replaced by just two for the whole city. This was a political act by the ruling Labour group, who claimed that they paid too much attention to local opinion.

So much for democracy!