How sad it is to see Witney’s old Buttercross fenced off with unsightly metal panels, because it has been deemed unsafe.

This structure is so old no one is really sure when it dates back to.

As you said in your report in the Oxford Mail, the site certainly goes back to pre-Saxon times, though, of course, the cross has been rebuilt and added to innumerable times since.

Yet, I’d wager, no previous generation has seen fit to fence it off as a safety hazard – though old pictures show it being in far worse condition than at present.

I can imagine the safety rails staying there for months now, while the authorities sit on their hands.

Come on Witney Town Council: get a couple of builders in there, fix it up and have done with it.

No other country would have such a lily-livered approach to health and safety – or such a tardy attitude to restoration.

Would the Italians fence off the Leaning Tower of Pisa? If it was in Britain it would have been demolished as a safety risk.

G HUSBAND North Oxford