Sir – If Ruskin College have long held a desire to develop their meadows in Old Headington, they have certainly not made this plain. On the contrary, in their planning application for their new accommodation block in March 2009, they said: ‘the site bears a wider relationship with the surrounding fields and rural landscape. The adjacent fields to the north . . . are one of the most important features’.

It’s relevant that there were covenants relating to the fields as recently as one month ago according to the Land Registry. They pre-date Ruskin’s acquisition of the Rookery and its grounds, and demonstrate a clear intention to preserve the fields for posterity as green spaces.

Labelling local people as ‘nimby’ is a tactic traditionally employed by would-be developers to devalue opponents’ arguments.

However, as Simon Jenkins says in defence of ‘nimbyism’ in Friday’s Guardian ‘if we do not love and protect our own spaces, no one else will’. These fields are not just the backyard of the residents of Headington and Northway but of the whole of Oxford.

Nor are we alone in thinking the fields special. A Planning Inspector recommended them for inclusion in the Green Belt in 1994; the city council acknowledged that they had no development potential and should be kept open to preserve the setting of the northern edge of the Old Headington conservation area. Subsequently the fields were brought into the conservation area in 1998.

We do not question Oxford’s need for new housing and the West Barton project will provide this, with up to 1,200 new homes.

Carving up a gem of a conservation area and destroying one of its vital green spaces was never a part of that original plan and should be resisted at all costs.

Dr Zoe Traill, On behalf of the Ruskin Fields Group, subcommittee of the Friends of Old Headington