A £45M Oxford college scheme to redevelop a former hospital site will face powerful opposition.

Keble College wants to create a modern new campus between the Woodstock and Banbury roads.

But the Oxford Preservation Trust says the plan will mean the loss of a building of national importance.

Keble acquired the site of the former Acland private hospital four years ago in a £10.75m deal.

The new campus would provide rooms for 250 students, and teaching and research facilities on the site next door to the Royal Oak pub in Woodstock Road.

The Keble development would have frontages on both the Woodstock and Banbury Roads, and would be just across the road from the £500m campus Oxford University is creating on the former Radcliffe Infirmary site.

But Oxford Preservation Trust director Debbie Dance said: “It is a very dense development which tries to get too much on to the site.

This has led to buildings which are too high and too bulky and which will over- dominate the surrounding area. The suggested loss of the listed building of importance locally and nationally, with its link to the Acland family, in order to achieve a cleared site on which to develop, is not something that we support.”

She said the site occupied an important position on both major roads into the city centre and was surrounded by listed buildings, but bore no relation to the character of Banbury Road and surrounding buildings both old and new.

Keble bursar Roger Bolden told the Oxford Mail the development would create a new Oxford college quad with sunken gardens, and a new public route for pedestrians and cyclists running along the site's northern boundary with St Anne's College.

Under the plan the Acland Hospital would be demolished.

But Felstead House, the oldest building on the site, dating from the 1860s, would be retained.

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