Campaigners welcome government rethink on Stonehenge tunnel

NEWS RELEASE: WEDNESDAY 20 JULY 2005: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Save Stonehenge! [1] campaign group has congratulated Transport Minister Dr Stephen Ladyman on his decision to rethink a controversial road tunnel proposed for Stonehenge, after an announcement today that the estimated cost has soared to over 470 million pounds [2].

Although the government has long conceded that the road makes no economic sense [3], supporters such as English Heritage and the Highways Agency have claimed the road is justified because it would "improve" Stonehenge for visitors. But opponents, including Save Stonehenge! have always dismissed that idea as a half-truth.

The Highways Agency, the government body charged with building the road, attempted to justify the scheme by renaming it the A303 Stonehenge Improvement: "Removal of busy roads and other 20th century clutter from sight of Stonehenge has long been a government objective".[4].

But that is no reason for filling the World Heritage Site with wider, busier roads and 21st-century clutter instead, according to the opponents.

Save Stonehenge! has consistently argued that the plan is a thinly disguised, old-fashioned road-widening scheme and part of a much bigger project to construct a huge new Euro-route from London to Exeter. While the group accepts that the road could bring some benefits to the world-famous stone circle, they argue that it would be incredibly destructive of the World Heritage Site as a whole - the 6500 acres (2600 ha) around and including the well-known monument, largely owned by the National Trust, which also objected to the plan.

At a three-month public inquiry held in spring 2004 [5], opponents, including the influential Stonehenge Alliance of environmental, transport, and archaeological groups [6], attacked the scheme on all fronts. Leading transport expert and government advisor Professor Phil Goodwin attacked weaknesses in the economic case. Tunnel or no tunnel, archaeologists and landscape experts pointed out that the new highway would have resulted in over two miles of brand-new dual carriageway being bulldozed through the World Heritage Site, effectively cutting it in two. A further six miles of four-lane road would have been constructed at ground level or in cuttings through the surrounding landscape. A gigantic interchange, just outside the western boundary of the World Heritage Site at Longbarrow Crossroads, would have destroyed important archaeological remains, while a new flyover and visitor centre at Countess, to the east, would have blighted the homes of many local residents. River experts highlighted the possibility of damage to the internationally important Avon river system and the intimate landscape of the River Till. And for what benefit? Noise experts proved that, even with a tunnel, traffic would still have been audible at Stonehenge. The opponents argued that such a catalog of environmental disaster could, in no way, be described as an environmental "improvement" [7].

According to Chris Woodford of Save Stonehenge!:

"This scheme has become a white elephant - a half-billion-pound monster that would stampede through one of the world's best-loved landscapes, wreaking havoc and destruction - and must be scrapped immediately."

"Putting a motorway through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site is like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa or drilling a bolt through the neck of the Venus de Milo. This was always a quick and dirty motorway scheme pretending to be an archaeological improvement. It was Jeremy Clarkson dressed up as Tony Robinson. It would have scarred one of the world's most important landscapes for all eternity."

"We welcome the announcement of a review. We've seen too much blinkered bulldozing from governments in the past. What we must do at Stonehenge is not the quickest thing or even the cheapest thing -- but the right thing. It doesn't matter if it takes 5 years, 50 years, or 500 years to sort out Stonehenge. This sacred site has been there five thousand years and we should not be remembered as the generation who screwed it up."

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Notes to editors

1. Save Stonehenge! was established in March 1999 to fight plans to upgrade the A303 road to a dual carriageway through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
2. Latest cost estimate revealed by Roads Minister Dr Stephen Ladyman in Department for Transport Press Release, 20 July 2005, GNN ref 118417P.
3. In 1998, the Halcrow engineering group advised the government that the Stonehenge road was of only "marginal economic benefit" when it was forecast to cost only £125 million. That point was also conceded at the public inquiry held in spring 2004 when the Highways Agency's Stonehenge manager, Chris Jones, agreed that a road with such a poor economic justification would not normally be considered for construction: "With these sorts of economics, it would not be in the [government roads] programme". (Stonehenge public inquiry transcripts, Day 17 p55 line 18.)
4. Quote from A303 Stonehenge Improvement: Explanation of the Scheme and Non-Technical Summary of the Environmental Statement, June 2003.
5. The public inquiry was held in Salisbury from 17 February 2004 until 11 May 2004.
6. The Stonehenge Alliance is chaired by Lord Kennet and comprises The Council for the Protection of Rural England, Friends of the Earth, RESCUE: The British Archaeological Trust, Ancient Sacred Landscapes Network, Transport 2000, and Pagan Federation UK.
7. There is a summary of the public inquiry case at http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/allianceclosingstatement.html
   
8. This press release can also be downloaded from our website at http://www.savestonehenge.org.uk/ssnr200705.html