Sir – The Principal of Ruskin College should re-read the works of her college’s founding father, John Ruskin (Letters, May 26).

He forcefully opposed the destruction of the countryside. ‘Suppose you had . . . a garden large enough for your children to play in . . . but that if you chose you could double your income or quadruple it, by digging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn and turning the flower beds into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I think not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income 60-fold instead of four-fold. Yet this is what you are doing with all England.’ Furthermore, it is impossible to claim that Ruskin Fields do not already benefit local people — unless the college has somehow miraculously trained its birds and insects not to fly over the boundaries. All local wildlife is interdependent and needs every patch of green.

We who live on the outskirts of Oxford do not have grand buildings and ancient architecture to bequeath to the next generation. Here in Sandhills, permission was given, in spite of the objections of over ninety per cent of the local residents, to build new houses and a school intruding into the Green Belt.

Now we have a shiny new school instead of the rather ramshackle old one, but our children will never hear the larks which used to sing over the fields — they have gone for ever. If Ruskin College develops its fields, especially when the massive new project planned at Barton is take into consideration, there will be a huge swathe of land lost to wildlife. The college would receive far more respect if it withdraws its plans and lets the fields stay green.

Jane Jakeman, Oxford