Stonehenge: what might have been

 

The opening of the Hindhead Tunnel must prompt bitter-sweet feelings amongst all who value Stonehenge as it is a reminder of what might have been. At Stonehenge a tunnel not a great deal longer than the Hindhead one would have entirely removed all sight and sound of traffic from the stones but was rejected on cost grounds. As a result, although the A344 is soon to be removed from next to the stones the main A303 road will remain.

It’s all a matter of judgement what we spend money on, but Stonehenge is immensely important as a national icon, has just overtaken the Eden Project in the tourism stakes (more than 1 million visitors a year) and providing it with the originally proposed long tunnel would have cost less than twice what was spent to relieve the bottleneck at the Hindhead traffic lights and a lot less than building The Dome. Leaving it with the roar of traffic still washing over it was – and still is – surely a bad decision?

(Thanks to Andy Burnham’s posting on the Megalithic Portal for alerting us to this story)