Stonehenge tunnel: well ain’t that nice!

It seems that leading architects have welcomed the news the Government is again considering a road tunnel at Stonehenge (see the latest Architects Journal) despite the fact it is only a short one.

Roddy Langmuir of Cullinan Studio, whose practice worked on numerous proposals for the site in the early 1990s, said:
‘A tunnel [would be] a fantastic move……. Having drawn many options with engineers for tunnels in this landscape, one of the key consequences often ignored is the impact of the cut for the tunnel portals in such a subtly rolling landscape. These need clean incised banks that minimise land-take instead of the usual naturally retained battered walls and wide-mouthed portals. The engineering design needs to include an architectural appreciation of the landscape, and this historic landscape above all others.’

Is that how it’s all going to be presented? “Never mind the archaeological damage, look at the clean incised lines and the way it exhibits architectural appreciation of the landscape“? Have architects confused sympathetic architectural treatment with destructive archaeological action? No matter if it’s architects making that mistake. What matters more is if archaeologists make the same error.