ICOMOS-UK response to Stonehenge visitor centre planning application, November 2004

ICOMOS-UK wishes to express concern at some of the direct and indirect impacts on the Stonehenge World Heritage site (WHS) arising from the location of the proposed new visitor centre.

We appreciate that the Management Plan called for a visitor centre on a site outside the WHS to avoid undermining the values and significances of the WHS landscape and to facilitate managed visitor access. This is a laudable but, having seen this developed scheme, we do not consider that these proposals produce the desired benefits. Siting the visitor centre outside the WHS on the current site, with the proposed access arrangements indeed brings considerable disbenefits through the centralised approach to transport, interpretation and visitor facilities that are put forward in the current application.

We strongly support the need for better facilities for visitors at the Stonehenge World Heritage site in order to allow fuller understanding and appreciation of this extraordinarily important, archaeological landscape. We thus support the thrust of this application. Where we have concerns is in the details of the present proposals.

ICOMOS-UK’s primary concerns relate to the conservation of, and access to, the whole Stonehenge WHS. If the Visitor Centre were to be established in its current proposed location with the proposed access routes, we believe that there are environmental concerns arising from the density of people movement in the NE corner of the Stonehenge WHS, and conservation concerns arising from visitors not being given the opportunity to gain a full appreciation and understanding of the wider WHS through the lack of easy and structured access to other than the north-eastern quartile of the site.

ICOMOS-UK is recognised by Government as having special status with regard to World Heritage sites. With its parent body, ICOMOS, it is official advisor to UNESCO on cultural World Heritage sites, as set out in the World Heritage Convention.

Stonehenge has internationally acknowledged Outstanding Universal Value through its inscription (with Avebury) on the World Heritage List in 1986 as a cultural World Heritage site.

In signing and ratifying the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention), the UK Government, through this international treaty, is committed to protecting and sustaining the identified the Outstanding Universal Values for which World Heritage sites in the UK are inscribed on the World Heritage List and protecting the Integrity of such sites

The international ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Charter (to give it its proper title) which the application acknowledges, sets out how, in an increasingly globalised world, it is necessary to see the management of heritage sites as being related to a particularly local community or heritage group. Host and local communities need to gain benefits from tourism just as tourism needs to help provide funds for conservation. Tourist facilities must help endorse the sense of place which visitors come to experience.

The primary objective for managing heritage tourism is to communicate the significance of a place and the need for its conservation. The significances of the WHS are now well understood and, as set out below, extend far beyond the Stones, as does the need for conservation of the landscape. We consider that access and interpretation strategies should acknowledge this fundamental need and set out plans to allow visitors to optimise their understanding of the whole site. We do not consider that it is sufficient to tell people about the whole site in a visitor centre outside the site and then only encourage them to access part of the site.

ICOMOS-UK spelt out the need for a ‘solution’ to the Stonehenge problems that would deliver wide access to the whole WHS landscape and furnish visitors with an understanding of the full significances of the site, including the huge network of interconnected monuments, which surround the main Stones monument. We consider that the whole landscape is worthy of access and appreciation and that visitors should be encouraged to explore not just the Stones but the wider pre-historic, archaeological landscape and understand to the full its associated significances, subject of course to the rights of owners.

To that end we consider that the starting point for delivering access and understanding to visitors should ideally be a landscape plan for the WHS, which encapsulates what there is for visitors to see. This would include all the archaeological monuments and their visual and historical linkages as well as tree planting, land-use and existing access arrangements. Based on the landscape plan, an interpretation plan could be developed, showing what needs interpreting around the site and an access plan to show how access to the whole site could be optimised within a framework for determining the carrying capacity for various parts of the site.

Such a sequence would allow justification for the best access arrangement to the site and how visitors could be dispersed around it. The sequence together would provide for the comprehensive tourist development plan, which is called for in the Management Plan. (4.5.1)

We do not find this sequence set out in the current application and find it difficult to appreciate how the proposed interpretation and access arrangements are linked to the significances of, and opportunities afforded by, the Stonehenge archaeological landscape – which the application, and the associated promotional material, spell our so clearly.

The text submitted with this application reinforces the significance of the whole cultural landscape. The section on Cultural Significance says that:

The key question seems to us to be whether the proposed access to the WHS delivers opportunities for visitors to understand to the full these cultural significances. We do not consider that this has been entirely achieved with the proposed scheme which focuses on channeling people to the Stones, delivers the bulk of the interpretation and visitor facilities in a centralised way off-site, and requires the service of a land-train to transport visitors long distances across the site.

The current scheme is said to cope with current visitor numbers and to projects static visitor numbers of c.750,000 per annum into the future. This does not seem to be in line with government targets and, given the iconic status of the Stonehenge WHS in the UK, and the fact that the site is already recognised and well known overseas as one of the most important pre-historic sites in the world, does not seem to take fully into account the expected long term expansion of global tourism.

The World Tourism Organisation is predicting a growth in European tourism over the next ten years. And the UK Government plans to support the expansion of domestic and rural tourism via the RDAs and Visit Britain as outlined in the paper Tomorrow’s Tourism Today - (July 2004).

WTO's Tourism 2020 Vision forecasts that international arrivals are expected to reach over 1.56 billion by the year 2020. Of these worldwide arrivals in 2020, 1.2 billion will be interregional and 0.4 billion will be long-haul travelers. The total tourist arrivals by region shows that by 2020 the top three receiving regions will be Europe (717 million tourists), East Asia and the Pacific (397 million). This translates into an almost 60% increase for Europe. (see table at end of letter)

We consider that any visitor reception scheme for Stonehenge needs to address these trends. The present visitor centre with its reliance on one land train system to transport visitors towards the central part of the site would seem to present severe transport difficulties linked to an expansion of visitor numbers and rising visitor expectations at peak times that are not addressed in the current proposal. Either there needs to be the potential to cope with greater visitor numbers or a system to ensure that visitor numbers are in some way restricted in response to conservation requirements of the site.

Whereas it is made clear in the application that the visitor centre has the capacity to be extended, it is difficult to see how an increase of visitors can be accommodated on site within the centralised model that underpins this application. An increase of around 60% would mean demand for more land trains and for more facilities at the drop off points, both of which would be difficult to achieve.

From the information available, it would appear that an increase in visitor numbers, in line with international forecasts, could lead to considerable problems associated with the proposed transport and with the lack of on-site facilities – seating, lavatories, catering and shelter for those waiting for transport.

The main rationale for the site of the proposed visitor centre is that it is outside the World Heritage site. Whereas this is commendable in that the there is no direct physical impact on the WHS, there are, in our view, disbenefits arising from this siting, as follows:

These seven points are further developed in turn below.

By concentrating all key facilities in a large visitor centre in a 'detached' location over half an hour's bus ride and around 0.5 km, or a 10-15 minute walk, away from the focal point of the Stonehenge stones, two rival, competing visitor attractions could be created - the visitor centre and the Stonehenge World Heritage Site

The visitor centre is large and considerable numbers of staff will be needed to service it. In order to make it pay, we believe that it will be necessary to attract people to the visitor centre. There is a danger that the visitor center could become an attraction in its own right, rather than providing an entrée to the World Heritage site.

The distance of the visitor centre from the Stones, the focal point of Stonehenge, and the fact that easy access is planned only to approximately a quarter of the WHS, implies that the location for the Visitor Centre is not providing the desired access to the wider WHS.   

The drop off points focus on Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and the Cursus as well as the Stones. If visitors only see these they will not come away with an understanding of the wealth and richness of the pre-historic landscape nor of the visual interlinkages between the Stones and their surrounding barrows and other monuments. The land train appears to result in a lack of balance in what is being offered to visitors, with emphasis on the northeastern quartile of the WHS.

We had hoped to see a scheme that set out a vision for presenting the whole WHS, and which included innovative and varied ways to allow access across the wider WH landscape – with the aim of allowing visitors to understand how the landscape was meant to be approached. This was in our view what the Management Plan called for in Objective 20 to increase public awareness of the wider WHS. This has not, in our view, been wholly achieved

The proposal to transport visitors over three kilometres in a land train – taking 25 minutes to the furthest drop off point – is adding to the amount of motorised transport visitors need to get to what they want to see. We consider that for a truly sustainable solution, and one that minimises carbon emissions, the visitor centre should be sited so as to allow as many people as possible to walk to what they want to see.

The land train is needed because of the siting of the Visitor Centre so far from the centre of the site. We consider the land-train to be an unacceptable intrusion into the WHS archaeological landscape, it affords potential noise pollution and there is potential for the frequency of the operation to urbanise the countryside. The route of the land train in the northeast part of the WHS also concentrates access on a small portion of the overall WHS. We are also concerned that there will be pressure to extend the land train nearer to the Stones.

If the land train is the only feasible solution because of the very long distances involved, in order to minimise its impact on the landscape, we consider that the land train should be restricted to certain numbers and frequencies and the train should be finished in a dark matt finish. The restriction on numbers could, however, be problematic in view of potentially rising visitor numbers – see paragraph 11 below.

The rational for the present scheme is that the main interpretation and information will be centralised and offered to visitors at the visitor centre – with minimal further interpretation on the land train and on site.

Research has shown that visitors can find it difficult to appreciate and understand information about a site they have not seen. The visitor centre, being sited just off the main road and in a quite different character landscape from that of the WHS, means that visitors will not have had chance to see and react to the archaeological landscape before they are taken underground to the exhibition areas. Once they have seen the galleries and AVs they then have to wait up to 30 minutes before they see the landscape they wish to visit and about which they have been informed.

Visitors generally want to know enough to get them on their way and then have the provision of further information once their curiosity and interest has been aroused. This means interpretation needs to be offered in various ways around the site – rather than being centralised in one offering – and targeted in different ways at different groups.

The application acknowledges that the optimum drop-off point is Durrington Farm where it is said most people will want to be dropped off. This provides for a pleasant short walk of easy gradient towards the Stone and allows an understanding of the way the Stones are sited in the landscape; near here there are places commanding a fine view of the Stones on the skyline. In this broad area, we consider that there will be a need for further information to reinforce the messages in the visitor centre. Similarly visitors who disembark at King Barrow Ridge will also need re-orientating and further explanations about what is on offer in the landscape. We consider that these satellite information areas should have been addressed in more detail in the current proposals as well as how visitors are to be encourage to explore further aspects of the landscape.

We consider that visitor facilities should not be entirely centralised – particularly in a visitor centre that is so far from what visitors want to explore. If the aim is to encourage people to visit the Stones and take a walk in the wider landscape, then the provision of visitor facilities needs to reflect this aspiration.

The analogy of well researched, successful, out-of town shopping centres such as Blue Water suggests that there is a need for the provision of toilets every 20 minutes as well as catering outlets and wet weather cover in order to provide a viable operational model. The small lavatories currently provided in the proposal near the Stones (four in all) are likely to be inadequate even for the current visitor numbers and seem to us to be in the wrong place. The almost sacred heart of the WHS, the Stones, is an area where lavatories and other forms of visitor facilities are most inappropriate.

The present scheme, in our view, will spawn the need for further facilities around the site and this has not been acknowledged in the present application.

It seems unrealistic to expect that visitors will not need further lavatories near the dropping off points and probably also refreshments, particularly on cold, wet or hot days. This could lead to the unplanned development of further facilities such catering caravans and 'portaloos' around the site, in response to the needs of visitors, if planned facilities are not provided.

The Management Plan calls for the long-term interests of the local community to be a determining factor in selecting options for tourism management, and for tourist facilities to benefit the local economy (4.5.18).

It is not clear how this is being put into practice as the visitor centre seems to be remote from the local community in terms of how they might benefit from it.

We consider that the proposed visitor centre can only be properly evaluated in terms of what it delivers in terms of access and interpretation to the WHS and its impact on the WHS. If this approach is adopted, then we consider that some of the impacts of the visitor centre are unacceptable for the following reasons:

We appreciate that the Management Plan called for a visitor centre on a site outside the WHS to avoid undermining the values and significances of the WHS landscape and to facilitate managed visitor access. Having seen this developed scheme, we do not agree that siting a visitor centre outside the WHS on the current site produces the desired benefits, and indeed brings considerable disbenefits through the centralised approach to transport, interpretation and visitor facilities that are put forward in the current application.

ICOMOS-UK supports strongly the need for better visitor facilities and interpretation at the Stonehenge World Heritage site. We do not, however, consider that the solution put forward in this application fully optimises the potential to disperse visitors around the World Heritage site or allows them to understand on the ground the complex significances of this remarkable archaeological landscape.

We cannot therefore fully support the approach put forward in this application and recommend that the Council defer consent, in order that further discussions may take place on how to deliver a more satisfactory site experience for visitors in tune with the sensitivities of the landscape, the forecasts for visitor numbers and the Management Plan.

ICOMOS-UK would appreciate being informed of any changes to this application and also of the Committee’s response to the application.

Yours sincerely

Annex: