Motion to the National Trust on Stonehenge

In October 2001, members of the National Trust (for the sake of overseas readers: an English conservation body that owns and manages much of the land around Stonehenge) submitted a motion to the organization's Annual General Meeting asking it to consider very carefully the implications of its policy on the proposed Stonehenge road scheme. The motion, written by Dr Christopher Gillham and appended below, was defeated by 65,601 votes to 24,290 votes.

Background

The Government, despite its original commitment to a policy of building roads only as a 'last resort', is again beginning a massive construction programme. While it avowedly rules out the creation of new motorways, it continues to plan high capacity links by stringing together series of bypasses. One such proto-motorway is the A303 link from London to the southwest. The landscape of Stonehenge is the obstacle in the way of this ambition.

The Trust has long regarded the proximity of the existing A303 as an undesirable intrusion into the ambience of Europe's most important prehistoric monument. Since the mid 1990s it has been in discussions with Government on 'solutions' to the road problem.

While the Trust has never committed itself to accepting the need for a road improvement at Stonehenge, there appears to have been a tacit assumption that such a need exists. The Trust has suggested the possibility of a long-bore tunnel, while the Government proposes a cut-and-cover road.

The Case

Anyone of sensibility would like to see Stonehenge standing remote from the frenetic activity of 21st Century roads. Its very accessibility paradoxically makes it inaccessible to those most likely to value its mystery - better perhaps to make access sufficiently difficult that only a few would take the effort to get there, while for others 'Enough that in our hearts we know there's such a place.'

Stonehenge, however, is not just a localised monument; it is part of an extensive landscape of geography, history and, more importantly, imagination. A road beneath the ground does not disappear from consciousness or sensibility.

The Trust prides itself on taking the long-term view. The A303 on the surface of this landscape is an intrusion, but perhaps only temporarily so. In the history of Stonehenge the motorcar age may soon be but a moment gone. We should not contemplate radical invasive surgery to tackle the irritable symptoms of a disease that must be cured by other means.

Danger to the Trust

The warning to the Trust lies in the ruined landscape of another prehistoric site. The Highways Agency and consultants Mott-Macdonald, with whom the Trust is now in consultation over Stonehenge, were the destroyers of the Iron Age site of Twyford Down as well as 14 archaeological sites at Newbury.

The Trust, by even a tacit acceptance of a need for a new road at Stonehenge, thus puts itself in the camp of some of the most environmentally irresponsible forces at work in the country. It puts itself against the wider environmental movement and against the communities elsewhere that will suffer from the traffic-generative effects of increasing the capacity of the A303. The Trust should have a wider and longer view than this.

Motion

It is proposed that the Council:

1. reconsiders the Trust's position in its dealings with Government over proposed road 'improvements' at Stonehenge.
2. consults with the main groups campaigning on road transport and environmental issues.
3. declares that it does not accept the need for any development that increases road capacity at Stonehenge