Cinderella's children

This is the housing estate that has been called the Cinderella of Oxford. It's been here since 1948, half a mile down the road from the good and comparatively affluent people of Headington, who once made the news by sending food parcels to Cinderella's children.

To this particular Cinders, the news is like the Ugly Sisters critical, demanding, unforgiving. Cinderella is expected to be perfect and her children to be paragons of virtue.

Rewind this urban fairy-tale to January, 1999, and you discover that a seven-hour armed siege was taking place on the estate, following a 'domestic' in which a woman was stabbed in the leg.

No-one was shot, but then no-one was surprised, either.

What else did you expect? For Cinderella, read Barton, a place with a past, facing an uncertain future.

Fast forward to January, 2001. In the depths of winter, Cinderella sits in her rags in the rain as the police pay an early morning visit. Three residents are arrested and charged with possession and intent to supply Class A drugs.

Every city in the land has its poor relation, its embarrassing relative, its problem area. To look through the newspaper cuttings of stories concerning Barton is to encounter headlines like 'Vandals destroy hard-won dream' above a self-destructive tale of a trashed community minibus.

There are accounts of airgun pellets fired through the windows of a caravan in which children played; descriptions of Barton as 'a nightmare estate' and of a section of its young people as 'seething, feckles, dangerous no-hopers'.

'Thugs fear on council estate', stories of bus drivers threatening to turn the area into a no-go zone after their vehicles were pelted with rocks and they were subjected to abuse. Welcome to Barton, says the road sign.

Over the years, Cinderella has been wooed and jilted by fate and circumstance. For the past 29, newsagent Sue Holden has been part of the Barton story and a witness to it all.

In 1995, she was quoted as saying: "Yes, we have had our problems but now they're in the past."

Six years on, she has lost none of her enthusiasm for the place or her belief in it that she shares with her husband, Barry, and the overwhelming majority of Bartonites.

"Cinderella yes, that's how the world sees Barton," she agrees. "But we're trying to turn it around.

"We're regarded as Headington's very poor relation, but put against, say, Rosehill, we're quite rich in comparison."

There are those who will tell you that the some residents of the aforementioned Old Headington have been known to thank God (or at least the planners) for the dual carriageway and roundabout that separates the land of milk and honey from Cinders perched on the side of her hill.

Jonathan Sewell has been Barton's parish priest for the past two years. He cheerfully admits that some would regard his ministry as "probably one of the worst jobs in the diocese of Oxford. It's a hard and a tiring place to work but less game-playing goes on here and it is possible to get involved with the community much more quickly.

"And if the people don't like you here, they say so. People look after each other very well. Essentially, Barton is a village it's got a church, a school, a community centre and it's all here.

"There's been a long settling down process and there are large areas of monochrome housing of a very poor standard like Manor House was, for instance which was built with a short-term view of things and that goes against building up a community."

"And," says Sue Holden, "a sense of community is what makes people stay here."

"I chose to come here," adds the vicar. "This community makes huge efforts to support each other and they know about pain and are realistic about life. The number one priority here should be education.

"Kids shouldn't be disadvantaged by their locality. The best thing that happened here was Thatcher selling off the council houses, because you need diversification in any community. The young families who are moving in here don't want to live in a slum and so they put more into it."

"In the 29 years that we've been here, I've never despaired," says Sue, the constant optimist. "Because when you do that, you lose it. I live over the shop, literally, and if that's living on the front line here, well, I wouldn't want it any other way.

"Our shop is far more than just a newsagents, it's more like the corner shop of years ago, the one contact with the outside world for some people on the estate. More money from both the city and county councils would help, but it needs to be spent wisely."

Sue pauses. "Although there are signs that maybe the councils are on a learning curve. Sometimes, the stories about Barton dismay me," she admits, "but I always try to redress the balance with the good stuff that happens here.

"It's sad when bad things happen," agrees Jonathan. "Like the drugs story you mentioned. Barton's biggest problem, drug-wise, is alcohol, far more than any other drug abuse. In fact, there's probably more drug abuse going on in the Oxford colleges it's just contained and controlled better.

"Society will always want to create 'pariah' areas it makes people feel better about themselves. Barton falls into that category. The biggest disaster that could happen would be a recession.

"At the moment, there's one per cent unemployment here I personally know of no-one who is out of work, but a lot of people here work in the service industries and in a recession, they're the first to be cut."

Barton has also had more than it's share of teenage mothers.

"Maybe that was the case five or ten years ago," says Sue, "but not any more. Teenage pregnancies have grossly reduced and as for dysfunctional families, there are no more in Barton than there are anywhere else."

Jonathan agrees. "Things overall have improved in the past two years especially there's a good cross-section of people in the 4,000 population here.

"Twenty-five to 30 per cent of the houses now are privately owned. Manor House has come down and Meadowbrook has replaced it. We have all sorts of people living here professional people, too. There's a pride here most people's houses are immaculate."

"I've been in a few houses here, over the years, " says Sue, "and the ones I wouldn't want to go back to, I could count on the fingers of one hand."

Barton is far from being Oxford's Beverly Hills, but neither is it like a version of Beirut in its bombed-out heyday. Sure, some of the gardens are postage-stamp wastelands and some of the prefabricated houses look on the point of collapse. And the usual anti-social minority will continue to grab the headlines.

But the people of Barton retain a fierce pride in the place. Prince Charmings don't really exist, but Cinderella's children still believe that, one day, they too will go to the ball.