The 11th yowling moggy: silence about massive visual vandalism.

Why yowling moggy? Because a series of misrepresentations (11 so far) may suggest a concerted agenda….

.What is widely accepted as Stonehenge’s central purpose and significance, the spectacle of the winter solstice sunset as seen from the stones, is under threat from the UK bodies charged with protecting the World Heritage Site. Will it soon be dulled and outshone and the iconic final flash be lost in an intense glow or even direct beams of light coming from the entrance dual carriageway of a too-short tunnel just 800 metres away? Is this how it will be?

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If the tunnel entrance is built where digging is currently happening we’ll surely be robbed of the ability to “go back in time” and experience what the builders of Stonehenge intended. The Chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, Andy Rhind-Tutt, has just put it with great clarity: “If they are going to put a tunnel in and it came out where they are exploring at the moment, you’re going to have this glow coming off the ground as the sun sets, so it would destroy the whole purpose and meaning of Stonehenge.”

As always, the public are being treated like fools. Highways England say they are “still looking at all options” and this is “just one part of a wide range of surveys” yet it has always been clear from the maps that if a short tunnel is to be built then the spot which is currently being dug is the lead probability – indeed, the almost inevitable position for the western portal. Just watch, they haven’t arranged a dig there for no reason. Meanwhile, English Heritage has dutifully repeated the same completely misleading phrase it has used ad nauseam for many months: it supports a tunnel “if it is designed and delivered well“.

The bitter truth though is that a short tunnel can’t be designed and delivered “well” and that glow and those lights can’t be spun away. English Heritage, Historic England and the National Trust are in the excruciating position of trying to put lipstick on a pig. Please sign and share The Stonehenge Alliance’s petition, it really is important if something very precious and more than four thousand years old isn’t to be stolen.

PS….. It has just been pointed out to us that in the BBC article that quotes Andy Rhind Tutt’s comment there is also the assertion that earlier this year a Unesco report backed the idea of a short tunnel. It’s a total lie and it was the second yowling moggy. We dealt with it here: https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/can-icomos-be-got-at/

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[To see the others put Yowling in the search box.]