From issue # 9 of Scorpion (editor, Martin Wainwright, Merton), 23rd April 1970:

Once again Christ Church Meadow has been a field for controversy. Early this year, the Thames Conservancy complained to Oxford City Council that Christ Church Meadow was out of time with the Isis and the Cherwell and the surrounding land. The Council would have ignored this, but the Clerk reminded them that, at odd times within the last few years, similar complaints from Oxford citizens had been recorded. Even so, and despite the fact that it has long been recognised that the Radcliffe Camera suffers from precession, the Council found it difficult to believe that such a large area could be wrong.

Nevertheless, the National Physics laboratory was requested to see whether there was any substance to the complaint, and, after a few hours of careful measurement, were able to announce that the Meadow was about 58 minutes and 22.3 seconds fast compared with the rest of Oxford. As this discrepancy had not been noticed by anyone before 1965, and so was presumably a very recent development, the Council was, at first, quite alarmed; but a careful scrutiny of City archives, and particularly of Christ Church Meadow, revealed that the meadow had been hit by a cannonball in 1646, and had been gaining slightly ever since. The matter was not, therefore, urgent.

Accordingly a committee was set up. A time and motion expert from the Royal Greenwich Observatory was employed as consultant to this committee and after studying similar disturbances in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Siberia, and Japan, assured the committee that it would be quite easy to put the Meadow right; but that, if it was allowed to become more than about 63 minutes and 15 seconds fast, it would get out of hand and correction would be impossible. The committee discussed and recommended to the Council that, although there was nearly thirty years' grace, immediate action might as well be taken.

The first plan was to surround the Meadow with best-quality rope and then to hold it down securely for the necessary period. The rope snapped, however, after only 5 seconds, and it was clear that neither increasing the number of ropes nor using a different material would sufficiently improve the method.

After a long debate by the Council it was decided to adopt a second, and very much more expensive, plan. So it was that, on July 8th, at 6.00a.m., a fleet of bulldozers set to work, and, by 8.00a.m., without attracting public attention, had moved Christ Church Meadow back by 58 minutes and 22.3 seconds.

And it is only now, now that a public panic is no longer to be feared, that the Council has permitted this story to be made known.

A story of a crisis of our time.