Sir, For family health reasons I am a regular visitor to the Churchill Hospital. In years past we enjoyed the meadows, the rabbits, the pond, the ducks and the occasional heron. They made you feel that even ill people can be human, part of the great web of life, rather than excluded. All that is now gone with the huge construction underway on the site.

To lose the Warneford Meadow is a step too far. As your letter from Jo Aldhouse expressed it so well, the meadow is important in many ways to many people, and provides a balance to an increasingly crowded part of Oxford. It is also important to wildlife, as she explained. Especially for people who are ill, contact with nature can be therapeutic. If we value the earth, we need to preserve places where we can become acquainted with nature in our daily lives, not just on holiday.

Jeanne Warren, Garsington