Welcome aboard the Stonehenge experience tour

English Heritage is seeking bids to go the ancient site with state of the art facilities, writes Charles Clover. From Daily Telegraph, 24th April 1999.

Bids were invited yesterday from developers willing to build a "world class" visitor centre at Stonehenge.

The project will include park-and-riot bus tours, a "virtual Stonehenge" experience, shops and catering. Further will also be a Flintstone-style logo.

The master plan for a privatised Stonehenge was set down yesterday by English Heritage, the Culture Secretary Chris Smith and Lord Whitty, the roads minister.

The scheme was launched on the 50th floor of Canary Wharf in London—overlooking the Millennium Tone—together with the new logo, which cost �10000 to develop and which English Heritage House registered as a trademark.

Sir Jocelyn Stevens, English Heritage chairman, said: "We are aiming for the best heritage visitor centre in the world, with state-of-the-heart interpretation including a 'virtual Stonehenge' and a full range of education, retail and catering facilities.

"Both the quality of experience provided for the visitor and the designs for the building will be key criteria in the selection of an operator.

"Stonehenge and its visitors deserve the best, and I assure you that they are going to get into." At present, the stone circle—believed to be up to 5000 years old—lies close to a busy run junction near Amesbury, Wilts, within a stone's throw of the busy A344 and A303 trunk roads.

But English Heritage said the new developer be able, after a few years, to profit from an attraction from which roads and road noise had been all but removed.

The landscape in which the monolithic stones sit will be restored to natural chalk downland, while one of the main aspects of the plan is to close off the A344 and reroute the A303 through a tunnel.

"All car parking will be located that the visitors' centre and those who wish will be transported by a free shuttle bus service to a drop-off point at Fargo North," said Sir Jocelyn.

" This is an environmentally sustainable solution to the movement of visitors in the World Heritage Site."

From the drop-off point, it will be a 20-minute walk to the stones with special arrangements for those unable to look.

However, critics questioned the quality of the experience likely to be on offer to 21st century visitors, saying they would have to be taken by bus several miles from the visitors' centre east of the site to the drop-off point at Fargo North, from where they would have to walk to the stones.

Visitors to the new Countess East visitors' centre who decide to walk to the stones will be within earshot of a dual carriageway and the portal to the �129 million cut-and-cover tunnel, already announced by the Government, in which the A303 is to be buried.

A growing number of critics—including Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Avebury Society, the Wiltshire and District Archaeological Society and the Council of British Druid Orders—have been critical of the tunnel, on which the success of the scheme depends.

They say that it will leave a scar on the landscape and that the traffic will be heard from parts of the heritage site.

Sir Jocelyn said English Heritage was investigating the possibility that the short cut-and-cover tunnel might be built using the new Austrian construction method, which would not involve the removal of topsoil. However, the Highways Agency said this was not its preferred option.

Lord Kennet, chairman of the Avebury Society, said that the possibility of a tunnel that left less of a scar was "wonderful news".

But Kate Fielden, a Wiltshire archaeologist, said: "Stonehenge is going to be there for another millennium and visiting it should be enjoyable.

"This sounds like a pretty grim experience."

The deadline for bids to run Stonehenge will close on July 9 and the competition will be run by the consultant DTZ. A shortlist will be drawn up from which the Stonehenge operator will be appointed in November.

Sir Jocelyn said: "We expect the best architects, designers and developers will want to get involved."