Views on the scheme

Last updated: 24 March 2006

Although Save Stonehenge opposes the current plan for Stonehenge, we have always sought to make available as much information as possible and to encourage informed debate and we will continue to do so. With this in mind, this page summarizes the views of some of the organizations and individuals who have so far taken a position on the new plan for Stonehenge. Groups are listed in alphabetical order.

If we have misrepresented any views or if you would like your group's view to be added to the list, please contact us

A36 Corridor Alliance

"The truth is that Stonehenge has revealed the essential rotten heart of Government transport policy. You cannot have the Environment 'at the heart of Government policy', as is claimed and continue with a transport policy which is profligate of resources, ruinous of the environment and quality of life and essentially unsustainable. It is time for the Government to acknowledge that it is not possible, with honour or integrity, to build roads through a World Heritage Site."

Association of Council Taxpayers (ACT), Salisbury District

"Support for the ACT Parker Plan restores the pastoral scene and preserves the henge without excavation and brings long needed relief to numerous neighbouring villages and the beautiful medieval city of Salisbury. Doff the blinkers blanking out all but the archaeology and consider contemporary human existence too, those especially who will suffer from present extravagances."

British Druid Order

Philip Shallcrass and Emma Restall Orr, Joint Chiefs, British Druid Order:

"As Pagans, let us have a little patience with the disruption and hold the image clear in our minds of how the temple will be, peaceful and free, in just a decade. After 8,000, ten isn't a long time."

Not all druids share these views, however. 

Council for British Archaeology

Still keeping an open mind about the various options. Website has lots of detailed background, authoritative facts, and planning history. More information:

• CBA statement from September 1998.
• Article by Dr Francis Pryor, CBA President:

  "In debating points of view which are genuinely held, let us not deter the Government from pursuing the project upon which it has now embarked".

• The Stonehenge we deserve?: by Peter Stone:

  "While it is clear that there is a real opportunity to remove the vast majority of the modern intrusions in that landscape, the opportunity should not blind us to our wider responsibility to preserve and conserve as much of that landscape as possible".

Countess Road Residents' Group, Amesbury

"At last, and from their own documents, the absurdity of the English Heritage proposal to site the Visitor Centre at Countess East is being revealed. It is hard to imagine any potential Operator being remotely interested in such a flawed commercial opportunity."

• Visitors Centre "will never happen": how the CRRG is fighting plans for a huge influx of visitors to Amesbury... and just who is "Lord Stevens of Stonehenge"??
• Countess Road residents pack meeting to oppose Stonehenge proposals by David Vallis, Amesbury Journal, March 6, 2003.
• Copy of a letter from The Countess Road Residents' Group, Countess Road, Amesbury to local residents

Department for Culture, Media, and Sport

Check out the scheme announcement from July 1998:

"The road scheme announced today at last unlocks the impasse that has met all previous attempts to improve this sorry state of affairs".

English Heritage

Champions of the scheme. Dr Geoffrey Wainwright:

"The huge visual improvement, the unique chance to free the stones from the sight and the roar of passing traffic, is worth it on balance. The long tunnel is just too expensive. The money just isn't there."

Friends of the Earth South West Region

"Heritage bodies should not be promoting road widening schemes as though these in themselves contributed to heritage objectives."

. Also read FoE's Stonehenge briefing by Mike Birkin. 

Dr Christopher Gillham

In a motion to the National Trust in October 2001, Transport campaigner Dr Christopher Gillham argued against increasing the capacity of the road at Stonehenge:

"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."

Green Party

According to Salisbury Green Party:

"Western Europe's richest prehistoric landscape is under threat. The Labour government, backed by English Heritage, want to bulldoze a new dual carriageway road through the middle of the World Heritage Site, ruining it forever. The Greens are the only political party to stand firm against this outrageous proposal."

Highways Agency

The roadbuilding wing of the Department of Environment, Transport, and the Regions, the Highways Agency was invented so that Government ministers could distance themselves from unpopular roadbuilding projects. More information:

• A303 Stonehenge Improvement: Latest assessment from the Highways Agency, December 2002.
• Preferred route announcement from 25th June 1999 by Lord Whitty:

  "The A303 to the West Country is an important strategic route, and I feel that the plans we are presenting today reflect the concerns of local businesses and residents, as well as the obvious environmental considerations relating to Stonehenge".

• Information about the Stonehenge scheme in the Agency's new document ROADS TO THE PAST, TRUNK ROADS AND ARCHAEOLOGY.
• Letter from Ed Bradley, Stonehenge scheme project sponsor, to Salisbury Transport 2000.
• The Highways Agency is part of the Department for Transport.

International Commission on Monuments and Sites-UK

Committee of archaeologists who have responsibility for looking after the interests of UK World Heritage Sites on behalf of UNESCO:

"The Stonehenge World Heritage Site is a key part of the nation's cultural capital: that capital needs optimising not compromising."

Tom Hassall, President of ICOMOS-UK, says:

"Judged against the �5.5 billion the Government is now proposing to spend on new road building, we believe that the extra amount needed to protect the whole World Heritage Site, can be justified and would allow the UK government to fulfil its obligations under the World Heritage Convention."

National Trust

Britain's National Trust is not linked with the American organization of the same name. Until Autumn 2002, the National Trust described itself as an "equal partner" with English Heritage in the new plan. Then it discovered serious shortcomings in the scheme and reversed its position. Although it has changed its view, its broad objective for Stonehenge remains the same:

"The Trust's vision for Stonehenge is: to unite and protect Stonehenge and its setting in a pastoral landscape where people can roam freely and without charge".

More information:

• Detailed article about the Trust's position.
• (The National Trust's archaeology page contains no information about Stonehenge, but may be of background interest.)

Pagan Federation

The Pagan Federation is part of the Stonehenge Alliance.

"Although the PF welcomes the adoption of a bored method of tunnel construction rather than cut-and-cover, the proposals overall are still unacceptable and far from being the best outcome for Stonehenge and the World Heritage Site as a whole."

More information:

• Pagan Federation statement on Stonehenge proposals.

Prehistoric Society

"The Society believes it is essential that there should be an independent assessment of the cost of a long-bored tunnel to act as a comparison for the proposed cut-and-cover tunnel. The destruction 13.5 hectares of the most archaeologically sensitive land surface in Europe, within a World Heritage Site, may be something which future generations will find hard to understand."

RESCUE (The British Archaeological Trust)

RESCUE has long campaigned for a worthy Stonehenge solution. More information:

• Press release in which Paul Graves-Brown outlines RESCUE's opposition to the scheme:

  "Is a 'cut and cover' tunnel the best that can be done for Britain's premiere World Heritage Site?... The scheme adopted will destroy around 20-30 hectares of one of the most important prehistoric sites in Britain."

• Summary of RESCUE's Stonehenge meeting in July 1999.

Stonehenge Alliance

A group of British archaeological, environmental, and transport organizations who have joined together to oppose the plan. The Alliance is chaired by Lord Kennet and its supporters include: The Council for the Protection of Rural England, Friends of the Earth, RESCUE: The British Archaeological Trust, Save our Sacred Sites, and Transport 2000. 

Transport 2000

Transport 2000 is the national campaign for sustainable transport; its local group Salisbury Transport 2000 is campaigning for environmentally sustainable transport around Salisbury and in the wider English county of Wiltshire.

More information:

• Salisbury Transport 2000's objection to draft orders, 18 August 2003.
• Letter from Salisbury Transport 2000 and reply from Ed Bradley of the Highways Agency.
• Newspaper article about T2000's objections, 12 May 1999.
• Salisbury Transport 2000 website
• Transport 2000 website

 

Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society:

"The scale of damage which would result from the implementation of a cut-and-cover tunnel and associated road and landscaping works, including the eventual construction of improved junctions at Countess and Longbarrow, now places the World Heritage Site under serious threat."

World Archaeological Congress

"We the participants of WAC 4 welcome the concern demonstrated by the UK Government to safeguard the future of [the] Stonehenge World Heritage site but urge the UK Government to reconsider its decision to insert a cut and cover tunnel across the World Heritage site. Particularly we ask that the UK Government looks again at the costs of a bored tunnel taking into account the full potential benefits, economic, social and cultural, and finds funding to build it. This appeal is made in view of the long campaign by English Heritage, the Government's advisors in archaeological matters, in favour of a bored tunnel."

Quotes

Read some of the things people have said about the plans for Stonehenge.

But what do you think?

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