Sir – At one time Oxford City Council went out of their way to encourage attractive ground floor shopfronts, for example recommending that the name of the company should be displayed in simple single letters, not as a logo, and offering all kinds of helpful aesthetic advice.
Not so very long ago, a clothing shop did some excellent work in building a new ground-floor frontage in stonemasonry which looked as though it would last for generations; but it is quite distressing to see how a building society has recently been allowed to demolish this for no obvious reason. They should have learnt from other establishments with far less money, for example a café near the Plain, whose proprietors have done their utmost in recent months to make the very best of what they have, in their case a small part of the townscape which delights the passer-by.
Most banks are very civilised architecturally, but the building society which I am thinking of has been quite barbarous.
Roger Moreton, Oxford
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