Sir — Professor Gerald Elliott’s regret (Letters, October 4) that Oxford City Council has not encouraged “the incorporation of a concert hall and performance facility in the new proposals for the Westgate Centre redevelopment” is well made.


I recently suggested on this page that a hall/performing space named in memory of Lina Lalandi should find its way into the new Westgate, aware that this will never happen.


When St Ebbe’s was substantially demolished in 1971-72, there was talk of a concert hall, a community theatre, a cinema and a community art gallery, in what could have been Oxford’s version of the South Bank.
Instead, St Ebbe’s and bits of St Thomas’s have been turned into an urban wasteland. Of the new Westgate, perhaps the Crown Estate, the Centre’s current owners, could be prevailed upon to think beyond retail. Perhaps John Lewis, who still plan to build a department store a hundred or so metres from Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, could also be prevailed upon to contribute towards something like Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, which Professor Elliott rightly praises.


Perhaps . . . but unlikely and the dismal failure to have any real and realised vision for St Thomas’s and St Ebbe’s over the last 40 years is shameful. As for Oxford’s West End, what and where is it?
Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington