Battle for Stonehenge – trial against car tunnel near the cult site

2023-12-12 11:26:00

World Heritage Site Battle for Stonehenge – Trial against car tunnel near the cult site begins

Photos of the stone circle always hide the highway.

© Picture Alliance

The government wants to build a car tunnel next to the Stonehenge stone circle. A colorful alliance of historians, archaeologists and druids is fighting against this. The tunnel could destroy parts of the cult site that have not yet been explored.

Stonehenge, the cultic monument from the Stone Age, is known to everyone. What is less known is that the huge stone circle is located barely 200 meters from a busy highway, the A303. Traffic is backed up here and the view of the street disrupts the impression of the place of worship. The road is so close because it is historically based on ancient routes.

The British government has wanted to solve the problem for years by building a 3.6 kilometer long tunnel. It would have a greater capacity than the road and would be “invisible” – in the future a footpath will run along the old route. That sounds tempting, but it meets with resistance. The tunnel construction would have a massive impact on the area surrounding the square.

Government is not giving in

As early as July 2021, a first attempt to build a tunnel was stopped by the Supreme Court due to concerns that the construction could have a negative impact on the UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the summer of 2023, the Ministry of Transport issued a new order – with minimal changes, according to opponents.

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A lawsuit has now been filed against the new order. The trial begins on December 12th. The Stonehenge Alliance believes that the tunneling will cause great damage to the area around Stonehenge. “Given the government’s indifference to the harm this path will cause, we have no choice but to file this lawsuit,” said John Adams, chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance. “As before, we hope that we will be able to stop this vandalism.”

Well-known historians lead the fight

The legal battle is being led by the Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site group, which was also behind the successful High Court action. Both groups include respected historians, archaeologists, activists and druids. Noted historian and TV presenter Dan Snow said it was “astonishing” that the government was sticking to such a “damaging plan” despite facing “so much” opposition and urged the minister to “come up with something better allow”.

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Historian and best-selling author Tom Holland is president of the Stonehenge Alliance. He stressed that the new legal battle was necessary to “stop a development which, if permitted, will permanently and irrevocably desecrate the Stonehenge landscape.” The whole thing is “an act of vandalism that shames Britain”. The druid “King Arthur Pendragon” will also protest against the tunnel construction in front of the Supreme Court in London. “This is the government’s arrogance. The inspectors in charge said it was a bad idea, but the government just ignored them and decided they’ll do whatever the hell they want.” In fact, the Ministry of Transport has brushed aside the concerns of its own experts.

But as illustrious and colorful as the anti-tunnel alliance is, it remains a battle of “David against Goliath,” says Tom Holland. 80,000 pounds were raised for the new dispute. But with this budget, the alliance is competing against the concentrated power of the government apparatus, which is determined to push through the 1.7 billion pound project.

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More than just the stone circle

Once completed, the tunnel section would run underground, but it would change the shape of the surface and thus the appearance of the place of worship. The earthworks are likely to have the greatest impact. Here a huge swath would be cut into the ground over a length of almost four kilometers. At a depth that has remained untouched since the construction and active period of the cult site. Today the stone circle appears as a lonely solitaire in a meadow landscape. Archaeologically, the romantic impression of abandonment is deceptive. The monoliths were the focal point of a busy religious center that was used for thousands of years.

New archaeological methods show that the entire area is riddled with cult sites and complexes. They remain hidden from the human eye beneath the meadow landscape. Unlike the stone circle, they have been swallowed up by the landscape. Vincent Gaffney from the University of Birmingham said that at most we had a 10 percent understanding of what Stonehenge really was and what the site looked like in detail.

Archeology of the inconspicuous

Archeology has also evolved. At the beginning of the 19th century, archaeologists were focused on treasures and spectacular finds. Today it is possible to gain extensive knowledge about past life from the smallest remains, individual bone fragments or layers of rubbish. In the past you would have simply cleared away a toilet, but today it offers more information than a proud sword or a jewelry box. These rather unspectacular traces would irretrievably destroy the construction work.

Those: Guardian, The Times, Independent