Sir – Your correspondent, Nigel Clarke, (Letters, April 25) suggests that the tower of St Barnabas (1869) is not exactly a dreaming spire.
It is not, and moreover, Matthew Arnold was using this phrase in 1865, before some of our familiar spires were there: most obviously Nuffield College (1960) and the splendid Wesley Memorial Methodist Church (1878).
Most of the college chapels have a tower, so this leaves us really with a small cathedral and three churches, St Mary’s, St Aldate’s and All Saints.
Also the little spire on top of Exeter College Chapel (1860), which was new when Matthew Arnold wrote.
It has to be said that a lot of small cities, perhaps even Gloucester and Worcester, are quite as well furnished with spires, and do ours dream particularly? Another possibility of course is that Arnold was referring to pinnacles, and in these Oxford does richly abound.
Roger Moreton, Oxford
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