The Stonehenge we don't deserve

Responses to Geoffrey Wainwright's report

'The Stonehenge we deserve',

Antiquity 74 (2000): 334 42

In June this year, we published Geoffrey Wainwright's paper on 'The Stonehenge we deserve'. This paper aimed to provide a review of progress towards sorting out the many problems of management, presentation and conservation of this World Heritage site and its landscape. As readers of ANTIQUITY are well aware, the fortunes of Stonehenge are intimately linked with politics, money and public opinion, and the long saga of possible solutions to make the site a better place for the future rest on these changing variables. Dr Wainwright outlined past strategies and the hope of future solutions as they were early this year. Already things have changed and the invited responses which we publish here discuss the recent changes of plan for Stonehenge. Baxter & Chippindale review the difficulties of the 'current' scheme and its incompatibility with visitor numbers. Fielden exposes the incompatibility of the A303 proposals for Stonehenge with legislation and planning, and Kennet & Young raise the problems of the various Plans and politics.

We sent these responses to Dr Wainwright for his current view of the situation.
 

'The Stonehenge we don't deserve'

IAN BAXTER & CHRISTOPHER CHIPPINDALE*

*Baxter, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0BU, England.

Chippindale, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England.
 

The Stonehenge we are offered

No sooner has Geoffrey Wainwright (2000) put forward English Heritage/National Trust (EH/ NT)'s latest dream in its Stonehenge Master Plan (1999) than it evaporates, another will o' the wisp on the downs. Contrary notions prevail in its twin, the Stonehenge Site Management Plan (2000), to which English Heritage is also a party. That other plan, intended to find consensus, evidently prefers the long bored tun- nel over the short cut-and-cover and believes that profits from a 'world-class' visitor centre should go to managing the site - rather than the commercial promoters Wainwright antici- pated would run it.

Since EH was founded in 1984, we have had many 'definitive' Stonehenge plans. In one period of just 12 calendar months, during 1996- 7, EH put forward successively three different proposals, each promised as the decisive solu- tion. The last time Dr Wainwright wrote for ANTIQUITY, under the title 'Stonehenge saved?', he ended: 'We intend that work should start in 1996 with completion in good time for open- ing in the year 2000 to celebrate the new mil- lennium' (1996: 12). Now, writing in the year 2000 with nothing started or completed or yet to celebrate, he ends: 'We must now seize this opportunity and bring the plans to reality so that by the end of the decade we will truly have the Stonehenge we deserve' (2000: 341).
 

Is this kind of Stonehenge solution financially achievable?

As we write in September 2000, no commercial partner has been found; as EH/NT indicated on 10 July in a Press Release they will instead go ahead themselves without commercial funding. Where is the capital to come from? Plans have depended before on a large gift from the national lottery, alongside money from a commercial partner, since EH/NT has no large investment funds of its own.

From its similarity to the Tussauds scheme of five years ago (EH/NT 1996; Tussauds 1997), the present scheme can be expected to cost upwards of £60 million. One can always shrink a scheme, but each 'de-scoping' gives less value for money. Some bills buying the land and making the car-parks stand whatever the size and quality of the visitor centre. Small buildings cost more per unit area than do large. 'Heritage sources' are also now to put money into the highway work, leaving less for the visitor provision. On borrowed money, the scheme could need to generate say £8 million annually, just to service its capital.

EH (1999), under current Stonehenge arrangements, clears an annual surplus of £l.6 million (£3.4 million income, £l.8 million costs). In the past, EH has expected to maintain this surplus for itself.

So a scheme needs to generate an annual surplus of around £9.6 million to fund its capital and to satisfy EH. A split-site operation, shuttle buses, visitor numbers varying much by season, by day and by hour, mean high running costs. With this funding and 1 million visitors a year, an average £9.60 has to be extracted from each visitor after those costs are covered. This is impossibly high when comparable attractions set the market price: Avebury (admission free), Stourhead house and garden (£8), the Tower of London (£ll). The full adult admission price to Stonehenge is currently £3.90.
 

A 'demand' model and a 'supply' model: two routes to a Stonehenge solution

One can approach the Stonehenge conundrum through the 'demand' for Stonehenge visits or through the 'supply'.

A 'demand' model starts with how many people want to visit Stonehenge and what they are happy with. Because the actual site is small the stone setting is only 30 m across it is often busy. Most visitors are not archaeology buffs, not expecting a long walk, not wearing clothes and shoes suitable for tramping in rain or far in summer heat. Perfect for the 'tourism economy', Stonehenge is a small, physically constrained site with the essential facilities. In its present form, the Stonehenge visit is cheap, easy and quick taking an hour or less. About 1 million people enjoy this annually at present. With so many, visitors have to use a path at a distance, and cannot go amongst the stones.

A 'supply' model starts from a different premiss: the idea that Stonehenge is a magical and lonely place, best encountered in sublime majesty undistracted by a crowd. This is an ideal for EH/ NT, conservation organizations at heart. The idealists want no visible roads, no intrusive visitor facilities, fitting downland surroundings, emphasis on the slighter traces of the landscape's prehistoric past, not many people to tramp the turf into mud and to break the majestic silence with their loud cagoules and louder children. Central to the Stonehenge scheme which EH/NT promises is the visitor being able to wander amongst the stones of Stonehenge. Now, we know from experience how many people can go into the centre of Stonehenge if it is not to be crowded and if the grass is to survive their tread; probably 60,000 a year, a few more if one were lucky with weather. In those kinds of numbers, visitors can explore the earthen monuments, like the Cursus, the barrows and the Avenue soft relics which cannot survive well were 1 million people a year to tramp to, around and over them. This model is defined by the supply of 'good Stonehenge experiences' that may exist before the numbers spoil it. It is workable for perhaps 100,000 visitors a year only a tenth of the present number. These few visitors require modest facilities and they generate modest admission income.
 

A self-contradicting scheme

Stonehenge is the place where a great variety of attitudes, interest-groups and desires meet and conflict. Most (not all) of those interestgroups think the present arrangements bad; most have ideas as to what would be better. But those several concepts of 'better' pull in different or in opposed directions. The 'demand' model, or the 'supply'? One or other, but not both at once! 1 million visitors or 100,000?

Central elements come from the 'demand' model. Visitor numbers are expected of the order of 1 million per year; all plans for the visitor centre have sketched a vivid account for the tourist, rather than a technical display for the already expert. There will be a great many visitors to Stonehenge.

Other elements come from the 'supply' model and a certain view of what the visitor ought to want to enjoy: the bracing walk across the downs, the interest in the lesser earthen monuments that make slight bumps in the grass, and stated repeatedly by EH/NT the freedom to wander amongst the stones, which we know a maximum 100,000 can do. There will be rather few visitors to Stonehenge itself.

Financially, the scheme is shaky with a high number of visitors, as the arithmetic sketched above proves. It is impossible with visitor numbers in the 60,000-100,000 range. Perhaps some of the 1 million will be content with going home after only a distant view, not reaching Stonehenge itself. We think not. Certainly we see no merit in a treatment of visitors which anticipates that 1 million or so will pay a top-dollar ticket price at the visitor centre, and then hopes at least nine out of ten fall by the way, so that only 100,000 will actually arrive at the place itself, where those determined few will get the best Stonehenge experience of walking amongst the stones.
 

Short and long terms at Stonehenge

Perhaps perpetual failed planning is the 'Stonehenge we deserve'! Perhaps it is even as well. Fifteen years of cancelled 'Stonehenge solutions' show how none have found a balance that would endure over time. How are we to plan for the real long term in a society where 'good practice' so changes decade by decade, even year by year? We remember that the present arrangements, with an adjacent car-park and a tunnel access under the highway, went uncriticized when they were built only 30 years ago. Now, no one defends them (except the present authors who recognize they do have merit). The Heritage Projects scheme of 1984 had visitors drive their cars into underground parking about 200 m from the stones: short walk. The Cullinan scheme of 1992 had visitors park nearly a kilometre away: long walk. The Tussauds scheme of 1996/7 had a remote car-park, 5 km away, whence visitors rode to a drop-off, and walked the last 300 m: park-and-ride plus short walk. The present Master Plan scheme has parkand-ride from the same remote car-park to a dropoff a kilometre away: park-and-ride plus long walk. These shifts in a 16-year period track the changing fashion in managing private cars in English towns; from 1970s car-parks in the town centre to 2000s park-and-ride from beyond the suburbs. Would any of these abandoned schemes, if built, have seemed right in the medium term of 20 or 50 years later? Even a century is not 'long term' in the life of 5000-year-old Stonehenge! And each short-term solution including the present plan with a cut-and-cover tunnel is destructive of the archaeology of the Stonehenge landscape that has survived.
 

References

EH (English Heritage).
1999. The commercial opportunity. London: English Heritage.
2000. English Heritage to secure Stonehenge Visitor Centre. News Release, 10 July 2000.

EH/NT (English Heritage/National Trust).
1996. The Stonehenge Millennium Park and visitor complex: planning brief. London: DTZ Debenham Thorpe. 1999. Stonehenge the Master Plan. London: English Heritage/National Trust. Stonehenge World Heritage Site Management Plan.
2000. London: English Heritage for Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Tussauds. 1997. Stonehenge: a new beginning for the millennium: compliant bid. London: Tussauds Studios.

WAINWRIGHT, G.J.
1996. Stonehenge saved?, Antiquity 70: 9-12.
2000. The Stonehenge we deserve, Antiquity 74: 334-42.
 

'The Stonehenge we don't deserve' continued

KATE FIELDEN*

* The author may be contacted c/o info@savestonehenge.org.uk

Geoffrey Wainwright has again brought the Stonehenge 'Master Plan' mantra to our attention (2000: 334-42) and there can, of course, be no disagreement with the laudable aim of improving the setting and presentation of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS).

The challenge, however, is not quite as he suggests one of channelling the energies of diverse interest groups to 'reconcile the sometimes conflicting demands of international legislation with local aspirations' (2000: 335). Rather, it is to meet the requirements of UNESCO's 1972 World Heritage Convention in finding a solution for this WHS which truly ensures 'protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations' in order to fulfil our Government's commitment to 'do all it can to this end, to the utmost of its own resources and, where appropriate, with any international assistance and co-operation ... which it may be able to obtain' (Convention: Article 4; my italics). All other considerations ought to be satisfactorily dovetailed into a scheme which gives priority to the international obligation.

The process of finding a solution should begin with a management plan. The one we now have (Blandford 2000) is rather good in a number of respects, despite shortcomings arising from its production. It had been compromised at its outset (December 1998) by the pre-emptive and hastily-conceived Stonehenge 'Master Plan' presented by English Heritage in September 1998 without formal public consultation. Repeatedly denied critical discussion of this 'Master Plan' by their Chairman, Lady Gass, members of the various organisations and others who took part in agreeing the Stonehenge WHS Management Plan have nevertheless succeeded in putting The 'Master Plan' firmly beyond the pale. In line with the World Heritage Convention, the newly agreed Management Plan confirms the importance of protecting the whole WHS, including those parts considered expendable by the master planners (Wainwright 2000: 342: col.2); and it makes no case for cut-and-cover tunnelling. Indeed, as one participating local farmer pointed out in discussion: how could it be right to plough a road through scheduled monuments at Stonehenge when he has been ploughing carefully round them for so many years?

Thus the Management Plan has finally exposed the 'Master Plan' for what it is: a wellspun outfit of emperor's new clothes, some parts of which, however, are proving difficult to unravel because they were initiated well in advance and without the benefit of the Management Plan.

Unlike the visitor-centre proposals, which are now on hold, the A303 'improvement' scheme proceeds on its apparently relentless course towards Public Inquiry in 2003. Wainwright, along with other supporters of the 'Master Plan', appears to disregard the numerous incompatibilities of this 'lynch-pin' road scheme with international law and UK planning policy.

Irreversible damage to archaeological sites and the WHS landscape through cut-and-cover tunnelling at Stonehenge (and all that would go with it) would not be in harmony with our Government's legal commitment to the World Heritage Convention (see above).

The UK Government's own policy document, Archaeology and Planning (PPG16,1990), specifically states (Para.8):

Where nationally important archaeological remains, whether scheduled or not, and their settings, are affected by proposed development there should be a presumption in favour of their physical preservation.

Further advice in PPG 16, together with that mentioned by Wainwright on World Heritage Sites (2000: 338) in PPG15 (1994), has influenced for- mation of significant Local and County Structure Plan Policies for the protection of the WHS. Salisbury District Local Plan Policy is unambiguous:

Development that would adversely affect the archaeological landscape of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, or the fabric or setting of its monuments, will not be permitted.

PPG 15 emphasizes the importance of drawing up management plans for World Heritage Sites (para.6.37). The new Stonehenge WHS Management Plan begins with the words (Blandford 2000: para.1.1.1):

The primary emphasis of the Management Plan is to conserve the outstanding universal value of the cultural heritage assets of the Stonehenge WHS. 'Conservation' in the context of this Plan includes not only ensuring the physical survival of the archaeological sites and monuments but also enhancing the visible character of their landscape setting ...

The Statutory consultation process on the A303 improvement scheme from 1993 onwards is another necessary consideration, especially for its November 1995 Highways Agency Planning Conference consensus that a long bored tun- nel would best protect the WHS.

The POST Report (1997), and the CSERGE Study (1998) commissioned by English Heritage both give estimated 'heritage values' for Stonehenge of around £300 million-close to the only publicly known quotes for a long bored tunnel; these will be important in informing the obligatory cost benefit analysis.

The issue of the inalienability of National Trust land bought by public subscription to secure its permanent protection against inappropriate development and now under threat of cut-and-cover tunnelling, must also be raised.

Wainwright points out (2000: 338) that the A303 proposals were announced as an 'exceptional environmental scheme'; but the scheme would be hard to justify on environmental grounds. The Highways Agency's (largely lo- cal) January 1999 consultation offered no choice between cut-and-cover at Stonehenge and a popular bypass for Winterbourne Stoke: the two were combined and are seen locally as a road transport solution. Previous English Heritage and National Trust opinion against cut-and-cover tunnelling, followed by Wainwright (1996), has now been underpinned by a more recent report published by the Highways Agency which describes this option as 'a major compromise as seen by the cultural heritage interests' (Halcrow 1998: v). A short cut-and-cover tunnel at Stonehenge would never be anything more than a cheap option, realisable only at the expense of agreed planning policy, inalienable land, numerous archaeological sites, and the settings of the WHS and many of its monuments.

It is interesting to learn (Wainwright 2000: 338) that the Highways Agency has employed Messrs Mott MacDonald as consulting engineers on the A303 scheme-a firm experienced in dealing with road protesters at Twyford Down and Newbury. Strong protest could be expected if cut-and-cover tunnelling were to go ahead at Stonehenge. Some see no place for direct action in a democracy. By the same token, development proposals ought to fit comfortably within the democratically agreed planning framework, however powerful the developers' clout.

As the master planners now seem to have realised, the roads must be sorted out first. The sensible way forward is to build on consensus. Apart from a major A303 diversion (which would bring its own problems), the long bored tunnel agreed by consensus in 1995 appears at present to be the only option which would be in tune with the new Management Plan. It would not damage the resource or place limitations on future management of the WHS and its visitors. The road retained above-ground for horses, bicycles and agricultural traffic which could not use a tunnel, might also serve (with a variety of drop-off and pick-up points) as a visitortransit route to and from a visitor-centre beside Countess Roundabout.

It seems unlikely, in the present financial climate, that the Government cannot afford bored tunnelling at Stonehenge and funding should in any case also be sought elsewhere. The Stonehenge WHS, unlike the Dome, is of long-lasting significance to our nation and can be counted on to attract visitors for many years to come: it deserves the best road solution.

Wainwright suggests in his Appendix (2000: 342) that ventilation shafts would be needed for bored tunnelling and that tunnel portals would have an adverse visual and archaeological impact on the WHS: the first, however, are not necessary and the second would rather depend upon where the portals are sited. Engineering consultants indicate that bored tunnelling could be undertaken successfully, despite local hydrology problems (Halcrow 1994). Wainwright appears to have overlooked his earlier statements that a bored tunnel is 'technically feasible' and 'would have no impact on archaeology, landscape, environment and local housing' (1996: 11).

It is, unfortunately, generally far too late to raise alternatives to the 'preferred route' at Trunk Road Inquiries. Discussion is usually concen- trated on the pros and cons of the Government's scheme on the table and, though consideration of other options is allowed, the alternatives are invariably rejected on the grounds that it would be too time-consuming, costly or inappropriate to work up a new scheme.

If the current unsatisfactory A303 proposals go forward and then fail (as indeed they should) at Inquiry, much ground and time will have been lost. Forward-thinking archaeological and environmental organisations therefore continue to hope that, despite present indications to the contrary, all options for the A303, including the long bored tunnel, will be thor- oughly explored 'in equal terms' as a part of the Highways Agency's assessment procedureas suggested by ICOMOS UK (2000). Such a study might bring forward more acceptable road proposals leading to a change of approach in sufficient time to obviate the necessity for an Inquiry. There might then be swifter resolution of acknowledged problems without compromising the implementation of the new WHS Management Plan.
 

References

BLANDFORD, C. & Associates. 2000. Stonehenge World Heritage Site Management Plan. London: English Heritage.
CSERGE. 1998 (revised). Valuing Different Road Options for the A303 (The Stonehenge Study). Universities of London and East Anglia: Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment.
HALCROW. 1994. A303 Amesbury-Berwick Down Tunnel Options-planning and design considerations. Highways Agency. 1998. Review of English Heritage 2km Tunnel and Comparative Options. Highways Agency. ICOMOS UK. 2000. Position statement on Stonehenge at February 2000. Unpublished fax from P. Whitbourn to D. Part & K. Fielden, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society.
POST. 1997. Tunnel Vision? The future role of tunnels in transport infrastructure. London: Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology.
PPG 16.1990. Planning Policy Guidance: archaeology and planning. London: Department of the Environment.
PPG 15. 1994. Planning Policy Guidance: planning and the historic environment. London: Department of the Environment and Department of National Heritage.
WAINWRIGHT, G.J. 1996. Stonehenge saved? Antiquity 70: 912.
2000. The Stonehenge we deserve, Antiquity 74: 334-42.
UNESCO. 1972. Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.
 

'The Stonehenge we don't deserve' continued

WAYLAND KENNET & ELIZABETH YOUNG*

* The authors may be contacted c/o info@savestonehenge.org.uk

We are assured by the Department of Culture, Media & Sport that Geoffrey Wainwright's article 'The Stonehenge we deserve' (Antiquity, June 2000) is written in his personal capacity, which is just as well. This cannot be 'the Stonehenge we deserve'; it is certainly not the Stonehenge we wish for; nor with any luck the Stonehenge we shall get.

The recently published Stonehenge Management Plan takes us some way down the necessary track, but there are still many hurdles. Among the relevant Departments of State listed by Dr Wainwright on p. 334, the most important of all was omitted: the Treasury. It was a Treasury decision, one must assume, that in November 1997 upset the rather good applecart then travelling towards a conclusion that would have satisfied all the other bodies Dr Wainwright cites. The consensus choice at that time was the 'long bored tunnel', to which both English Heritage and the National Trust had resoundingly committed themselves in 1994; but it was brushed aside. Although the Dome was awarded massive funding, Stonehenge was sent empty away.

From then on Sir Jocelyn Stevens produced a run of proposals, each heralded by consultatory fanfares, for first one, then a second, then a third site for the new 'world class' Visitors Centre for Stonehenge. Larkhill, Fargo North, and Countess East followed on each other's heels and the Secretary of State, Chris Smith, had to eat with exemplary patience many of the words he had uttered in public. At the time of writing (July 2000) Coun- tess East survives as the likely site. (Dr Wainwright refers both to a Countess East and to a Countess Farm Site (p. 337): there are possible sites on both the east and the west sides of Countess Road but the farm buildings are on the west.)

In Spring 1999 English Heritage advertised in the Property pages of the International Herald Tribune (perhaps in the light of Messrs AT&T's long run of advertisements featuring Stonehenge on the paper's back page) for an operator for the new Visitors Centre: here was a 'major interna- tional commercial opportunity'. In July 1999 Dr Wainwright told Rescue's Stonehenge Conference at the Society of Antiquaries that a short list of would-be operators would appear in September. It didn't; nor in December; nor in March 2000. A July 2000 press release from English Heritage shows that (despite massive expenditure on lawyers and consultants' fees) no operator has been found, and that until the matter of the roads is settled and a flyover is in place at Countess Roundabout, nothing will be built.

On 'the highway issues' (p. 3 3 7), Dr Wainwright refers to both the 'one-day international conference' that was mounted in July 1994 by English Heritage and the National Trust, and the 1995 Highways Agency A303 Planning Conference. But, as is now common, he fails to mention the ringing commitment made at the first by the Director General of the National Trust, on behalf of both the Trust and English Heritage:

The first principle underlying all our joint discussions in recent years has been a total commitment, on the part of the Trust and English Heritage, to find a solution to restore, and to maintain thereafter, the unity of Stonehenge and its natural, unsullied setting ...

We have concluded that the only feasible on-line route [for the A303) which ... meets the essential requirements of this World Heritage Site, is a long bored tunnel starting east of New King Barrows and finishing to the west well past the monument ... That it is the restoration to its grand and natural setting that is the National Trust's and English Her- itage's duty.

There is no historic site in England where we shall uphold that duty with greater resolve and determination.

The silent, never-acknowledged betrayal of this promise is perhaps the most dishonourable episode in environmental affairs of the last halfcentury in our country.

At the 1995 Highways Agency A303 Planning Conference (under an independent Chairman) the consensus was that the long bored tunnel should again be endorsed despite obvious funding problems, and the money estimated at some £300 million should be sought outside the Transport Budget. The Lottery was gearing up, and seemed a likely source.

The then Government's response was to leave it to the next one after the upcoming election.

Confusion then took over the driving seat. First a decision was taken how is not known that the long bored tunnel, for which there was both a general consensus and the specific commitment of both English Heritage and the National Trust, should no longer be considered: it was 'uneconomical'. Some extra money, however, would be found for the road from the DCMS budget: this was to be 'an exceptional environmental scheme'. Some more was to be set against the future earnings of the commercially run Visitors Centre. The virement of environmental funds to a World Heritage Site road project was something new in this country, and was to be welcomed as a good precedent.

But the scheme itself was not well chosen. Although the Government knew it would eventually have to present a Stonehenge Management Plan to UNESCO, English Heritage (Dr Wainwright presumably in the van) started out on what it called the Stonehenge Master Plan, to which part of the new extra money would go. It was developed with limited external consultation, and its centrepiece was the pair of cut-and-cover tunnels to which so much objection has been taken. These tunnels would be cut straight down into the chalk of the World Heritage Landscape, immediately beside the Stones themselves. Their double trench some 50 m across would then be refilled and covered over, the surface of Stonehenge Bottom would be raised and re-arranged, and the tunnel portals and lighting would be 'sensitively engineered'. Another part of the money would go for a substantial length of new dual surface carriageway within the WHS; and yet another part for a Winterbourne Stoke by-pass, which has nothing to do with the needs of Stonehenge.

The very existence of this Master Plan caused confusion (Dr Wainwright mentions it on pp. 338 & 339.) Here the trouble arose because, al- though the Management Plan would eventually govern the management of the Site, the Master Plan, including cut-and-cover tunnels and extraneous by-pass, was completed and announced in September 1998 by English Her- itage, several months before the Management Plan Working Group had even met. Yet the Management Plan is what the Government, in fulfilment of Britain's international WHS commitments, has to present to UNESCO. The Master Plan was not, as Dr Wainwright suggests, 'influenced' by the (much later) Management Plan: how could it have been?

What the so-called Master Plan spelled out cut-and-cover tunnels and all was widely assumed to be endorsed by officialdom and final: subject to planning approval and so on, this was what was to happen. Indeed in Autumn 1999, Salisbury District Council, as the Planning Authority, were asked to accept as Supplementary Planning Guidance a planning brief for the Commercial Visitors Centre, and they were told by English Heritage that the Master Plan governed policy, not the Management Plan. (Which anyway was still out to consultation.)

Alerted, and in some alarm, Ministers let it be known that this was upside down and back to front: the Management Plan is what is truly official and goes to UNESCO.

However, in April 2000, when the Management Plan was finally agreed and published, it did not mention the cut-and-cover proposal at all, and as part of a strategy to 'provide comprehensive treatment of road links within the WHS' merely proposed, at 4.6.4, 'placing the A303(T) in a tunnel. . .'. It also stated at 1.5.11 that 'the Master Plan ... runs in parallel to, but independent of, the Management Plan'.

So confusion still reigns: the Management Plan omits full discussion of the highways issues that are central to any proper management and pro- tection of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, and the unacceptable cut-and-cover tunnels appear to remain in play with the 'parallel' Master Plan: the dualled cut-and-covers are still (summer 2000) Highways Agency policy. But meanwhile another (southern) route, the Parker Plan, with no tunnel at all, has emerged. And a new figure for the long bored tunnel has appeared from a Highways Agency spokesman: only £40 million more than cut-and-cover (NCE Roads Review 22 June 2000: xx) instead of the £l00-odd million more which was mentioned previously.

In spring 2000, a group of organizations friendly to Stonehenge wrote to UNESCO to ask that Stonehenge be placed on its List of World Heritage in Danger because of the unacceptable tunnel pro- posals. ICOMOS UK, UNESCO's representative in Britain, then advised that all the road propos- als, specifically including the long bored tunnel, would 'need to be assessed in equal terms', along with the cut-and-cover proposals.

Dr Wainwright ends his tale (p. 342) with an account of the Visitors Centre - its monopoly car parking, its 'full range of interpretation, ca- tering and retail facilities'. He claims that 'the advantages 'of the Master Plan scheme' are such as to 'justify the damage', and that the tunnels with their scars, portals and permanent light- ing, the new dual carriageways, and the com- mercial Visitors Centre itself, would all be in keeping with the principles of sustainability: one form of environmental capital will have been sub- stituted for another with greater benefits to the land- scape as a whole.

Unless we have all been dreadfully wicked, Us does not sound like 'the Stonehenge we deserve'.

P.S. In fact, on 10 July 2000, Sir Neil Cossons, the new Chairman of English Heritage, announced that the search for a commercial operator was over and that a more 'hands-on role in the opera- tion of the visitor centre' for English Heritage was being explored. The Highways Agency, on the same day, confirmed the Countess Roundabout Flyover, which is of course welcome, but attach- ment to the Master Plan was repeated by both the Highways Agency and Sir Neil. Perhaps when they address ICOMOS UK's requirement that the long bored tunnel 'need[s] to be assessed in equal terms' with the cut-and-cover proposals, and the 'assessment' is carried out using the 'Environ- mental Appraisal Checklist' included in the DETR's 1998 'Policy appraisal and the environ- ment' Guidance, they will make the better deci- sion on that too.
 

Geoffrey Wainwright comments

Preliminary skirmishing

The fervour of the comments on my Stonehenge paper reflects the importance of the issue. Of course it matters what happens to England's national heritage icon and it would be a matter of deep concern if the issues were not hotly debated and controversial.

The Master Plan strategy remains as set out in my report, which took the project to April 2000, and has moved forward on several fronts. The lynchpin is the proposal to close the A344 and to remove the roads and traffic from within sight and sound of Stonehenge, with the A303 in a cut-and-cover tunnel. It was announced in July 2000 that English Heritage is to acquire the Coun- tess East visitor centre site - thus reducing its reliance on private finance and providing oppor- tunities for it to have a more hands-on role. The implementation of the World Heritage Site Man- agement Plan has begun and the National Trust has circulated a draft Land Use Plan for its own and English Heritage land at Stonehenge.

English Heritage's plans for the new visitor centre will be available for consultation in 2002, to coincide with the Highways Agency's Draft Orders for the A303 and following publication by the National Trust of its Land Use Plan. This will bring together proposals for the key elements of the Stonehenge Master Plan and, together with the ensuing statutory processes in 2003, will give ample opportunity for debate. The comments in ANTIQUITY are but preliminary skirmishes com- pared to what is to come when the detail is known.
(29 September 2000).