Sir – I agree with Geoffrey Fouquet about the neglected history of Bonn Square (Letters, October 3), although he doesn’t mention that St Peter-le-Bailey was replaced by a new St Peter-le-Bailey, now the chapel of his college.

Nor does he mention the existing ‘Bonn Square’ tourist notice (outside BHS!), nor Charles II’s mint, nor the Tirah monument.

This notice would fit well into Bonn Square, but re-written, taking out superfluous information about Carfax, the Town Hall, etc. The church pictured is St Martin’s. However it does deal with the 6,800 burials, and the 2006-8 redesign of the square, and its most obvious feature, “the Tirah monument which dates from 1900 and was the first war memorial erected in Oxford”.

We need information about the Tirah monument (not even ‘Tirah’ is carved on it). Tirah is near the Khyber Pass, but the only place-name on the monument is Uganda, where at least one soldier died.

It is not at all clear who died where, or even if the 49 privates listed died at all (because just one private, Private Butler, is shown separately as “killed in action”). This is a mess, and one feels that part of the inscription must have been lost and should be replaced suitably. The other loss from Bonn Square was the massive memorial stone from its naming ceremony — the council would never reveal what happened to that.

The new design of the square was never popular, and another defect is now becoming painfully obvious.

An unexceptional modern glass wall is fully revealed to the public, but the attractive and historical wall of Charles II’s mint is all but hidden by the new trees. It would be nice to acknowledge what it is an important piece of our non-university history, where the Oxford crowns were struck.

Roger Moreton, Oxford