Tunnel vision

From: The Guardian, 19th August 1998.

Archaeologists are in turmoil over a "barbaric" plan to solve serious traffic problems at Stonehenge. Maev Kennedy reports.

The Department of Environment and Transport could be forgiven for thinking archaeologists are a bunch of ungrateful b...b...boffins.

The only definite good news in the roads anouncement last month was for Stonehenge. Dr John Reid, transport minister, announced a £150 million plan to rescue the stones from their squalid setting, wedged in the fork of a perpetual traffic jam. The news came after a decade of the road planners flatly refusing to contemlate a tunnel under the site, on cost grounds.

And how do the archaeologists respond? By demanding a tunnel twice as long, dug by a method which would cost twice as much.

There is spreading outrage in the archaeological community that the "solution" now proposed for Stonehenge is a tunnel dug by cut and cover, instead of a bored tunnel.

"Barbaric, "said Lord Kennet, president of the Avebury Society. "Christ, what a mess," another senior local archaeologist said.

Cut and cover would mean digging a massive trench across the World Heritage Site -- the equivalent during construction of an eight-lane motorway, since the existing road would have to be kept open during work -- then roofing it. The more expensive but simpler option of boring through the chalk downland would tunnel below the level of any surviving archaeology. The presently proposed tunnel portals would not be visible from the stones, but would still be within the World Heritage Site.

"This is an abomination," said Lord Kennet, who has repeatedly tried to this and the previous government in the Lords over their treatment of Stonehenge. "The greatest disgrace is the wrong solution. Cut and cover is a barbaric method. No other country in the world would contemplate treating a site which is a world icon in such a way. The money for the long bore tunnel must be found."

"This is a disaster," another senior archaeological source said. "We will never be forgiven if we get this wrong. The road interchange implications for the western end of the tunnel are devastating -- it could leave the Long Barrow group, one of the best barrow groups in the land, under a motorway flyover."

The extra ground is alienable National Trust land, bought by public appeal in the 1920s to protect the setting of the stones, which would be temporarily ceded for the constuction work. Som studies say there is little archaeology in the route. Kate Fielden, secretary of Wiltshire Archaeological Society, agrees, but says this is itself significant -- she thinks it was kept empty by the builders of the last phase of Stonehenge for ritual reasons."You could almost see it as akin to a cathedral close," she says. "You have to decide whether this site is too important to tamper with, purely for a visual improvement to the setting of the stones."

Stonehenge, probably the most famous Bronze Age site in the world, is visited by more than 700,000 people a year. They crawl along the A303, then up the A344, which clips the heel stone of the circle. Then they park in a choked car park, squash into the souvenir shop, queue for tea and buns at a kiosk and eat them on the verge, or go straight to the stones via a concrete underpass. Far off, they see hundreds of alluring humps and stones but are penned in a little triangle of land between two roads. The whole mess was described by a Commons Select Committee as "a national disgrace".

One man, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, has made Stonehenge a crusade. He is now 18 months into his second four-year term as chairman of English Heritage, and most observers believe he is determined to achieve his vision of setting the stones in an unfenced green and pleasant land before he leaves office. Culture Secretary Chris Smith is also determined to resolve the situation. He got the Ministry of Defence to allow visitor access across Army land. And, in an unprecedented move, he has agreed that his department and other heritage sources will pay a third of the scheme's cost.

The chief archaeologist at English Heritage, Dr Geoffrey Wainwright, concedes that the tunnel will damage archaeology: "Our assessment is that the damage to monuments will be in two figures, so it has to be a balance of judgement. 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."

And yet in 1996 Dr Wainwright wrote in the journal Antiquity: "One reason for the present lamentable state of affairs is that it has resulted from an accumulation of short-term decisions in earlier times."

Next month, Chris Smith goes to Stonehenge to meet locals and politicians for the third time. In the meantime the latest solution to the Stonehenge problem should be added to the pile of documents already filed under "Probably not".