Stonehenge tunnel plan finalised by government

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A controversial plan for a road tunnel past Stonehenge has been finalised by the government.

Campaigners claim the 1.8-mile dual-carriageway tunnel will cause "irreparable damage" to the landscape.

However, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the plan will "transform" the A303, "cutting congestion and improving journey times".

Stonehenge tunnel plan finalised by government

BBC News
12 January 2017

The plan involves building a tunnel for the A303, which runs past the ancient monument

A controversial plan for a road tunnel past Stonehenge has been finalised by the government.

Campaigners claim the 1.8-mile dual-carriageway tunnel will cause "irreparable damage" to the landscape.

However, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the plan will "transform" the A303, "cutting congestion and improving journey times".

A public consultation to get the views of drivers and residents will run until 5 March.

The busy A303 currently passes within a few hundred yards of the ancient monument.

The tunnel forms part of a £2bn government scheme to upgrade all remaining sections of the road between the M3 and M5.

'Time bomb'

However, campaign group Stonehenge Alliance believes any tunnel shorter than 2.7 miles would do "irreparable damage to the landscape".

The chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, Andy Rhind-Tutt, described the tunnel plan as a "self-destructing time bomb" which would "do nothing" for traffic problems in the area.

Thousands of people have backed a campaign calling for a longer tunnel to protect the landscape

In 2015, a Stonehenge Alliance petition calling for a longer tunnel gained 17,500 signatures.

In a statement, the group said: "The Alliance does not advocate new road building at Stonehenge, but accepts the need to improve the tranquillity and appearance of the World Heritage Site and its setting.

"If the government insists on widening the A303 by means of a tunnel, it must be sufficiently long to avoid any further damage to [Stonehenge] and its setting."

English Heritage and the National Trust have also given their support to the option of "the longest tunnel possible".

Highways England's Jim O'Sullivan said: "Our plans for the A303 recognise the national importance of the route and these improvements will bring real benefit to the region and local communities.

"The public exhibitions will provide an excellent opportunity to explain further our plans and to hear feedback from stakeholders."

Stonehenge is one of the Europe's most recognisable prehistoric monuments.

The history of the Wiltshire site dates back 4,500 years and it is the only surviving lintelled stone circle in the world.

A report by UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites has recognised the benefits of the project.

Congestion on the A303

£1.4bn
Proposed cost of Stonehenge tunnel

1.8 miles is the length of the proposed tunnel

9.6 sq mi around Stonehenge is a World Heritage site

33% of the route is single carriageway

84 years since the A-road opened

Source: Various

Stonehenge tunnel plan finalised by government - BBC News

 

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druids will seek revenge.

 

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druids will seek revenge.

 

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Features

The Stonehenge tunnel is monumental folly

At a cost of half a billion pounds, it will deprive millions of motorists of a small but profound pleasure

Simon Jenkins

Simon Jenkins
21 January 2017
The Spectator

The astonishing has happened at Stonehenge. Some prehistoric force has driven ministers to make a decision. It is to spend half a billion pounds burying the adjacent A303 in a tunnel, to bring ‘tranquillity’ to the ancient place. The result has been a predictable outcry from protestors. The television historian Dan Snow has compared the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, with Isis in Palmyra: ‘vandals and zealots who destroy ancient artefacts’. Stonehenge drives men mad.

The stones have for a quarter of a century been as impregnable to change as they have always been to interpretation. Whitehall has been unable to decide what to do with a single-carriageway road which runs 200 yards from the stones and causes hour-long traffic jams in summer. The 1.2-mile tunnel is supposedly a compromise, between local activists who want a 1.2-mile tunnel and those who just want improvements to the existing road.

In her recent history of Stonehenge, Rosemary Hill makes the point that ‘each century rebuilds the stones in its own image, by turns romantic, scientific, counter-cultural’. Such ancestral relics rightly enjoy peculiar protection. But the idea of Stonehenge as tranquil is novel. Tranquillity would never have been its essence. The stones have fallen, risen, been ignored, propped up with cement and hijacked by every loony in the land.

Their present image owes much to the cults for which they have become a magnet, the druids, wicker men, warlocks, ley lines, UFO-watchers and hippies who periodically, often entertainingly, incorporate them into their fantasies. The druid ‘King Arthur’ Pendragon is currently demanding free parking for his motorbike, citing some prehistoric European convention on human rights against having to ‘pay to pray’.

With 1.3 million visitors a year, the stones have become English Heritage’s most successful and lucrative attraction. When I was last there, the henge was packed with people and transport vehicles, far more intrusive than the A303. Those seeking tranquillity should visit neighbouring Avebury, to me a far better evocation of prehistory.

Stonehenge is not like France’s Lascaux Caves, so fragile they have had to be closed in favour of a facsimile. What you see is what you get, robust stones requiring little upkeep. Indeed their thrill is as much the view from afar as from close to, and is enjoyed by millions who drive past on their way to the West Country. It is the thrill of a glimpse, a passing reminder of the longevity of human habitation in this land. I love this view, as I do the distant sight of Lindisfarne or Arundel or Dover. Motorists are as entitled as paying visitors to delight in the English landscape.

In other words, Stonehenge presents a direct conflict between the ‘bought rights’ of visitors to the stones, and the freedom of members of the wider public to see them from afar. The motorist may detract from the paying visitor’s pleasure, but a tunnel would kill the motorist’s pleasure stone dead.

The real Stonehenge cult is that of the modern ruin. Our experience of these places is straitjacketed into a timed, ordered and ‘curated’ experience, by professionals with ingrained views. English Heritage’s vision of Stonehenge is of a disordered jumble of stones set in a lawn within a serene park. Fair enough, but for millions of people the distant view from the road is no less valid. I find it extraordinary to spend, at the last count, £540 million marginally to improve the Stonehenge environs for one group of beneficiaries.

The A303 bottleneck could be cured by leaving the existing road one way westbound, and finding an alternative pathway to the south for an eastbound route. The landscape would look much as it does now but without the jams. Motorists would continue to get an uplifting glimpse of their past. The Wiltshire hillside would be scarred but it would not be torn open. Millions of pounds would be saved.

Interpreting Stonehenge will always be a moveable feast, a table at which each age will dine after its own fashion. To spend half a billion pounds drastically to enhance the pleasure of a few at the expense of the many must be wrong.

The Stonehenge tunnel is monumental folly