Stonehenge as a hidden Georgian gem

We’d just like to say how much we agree with Professor Dan Hicks’ contribution to the short tunnel debate:

“Another old idea is being revived hand-in-hand with the tunnel – heritage restoration. The focus is the stones, not their landscape. Stonehenge is reimagined as a Stone Age exhibit untouched by modernity. The A303 would be grassed over at the stones while a new road twice as wide is cut across the World Heritage Site, but tunnelled within the paying visitors’ view. The aesthetics of this “Stonehenge Restored” are determinedly Georgian. A stately monument within rolling lawns from which shuttles run along a new coaching-road between Bath and London. That carriageway hidden from the monument, so customers can stroll an “authentic” landscape of the past, never glimpsing the present.

Hiding the road from the stones would hide the stones from the public. Some 1.3 m people will pass through the Stonehenge giftshop this year, but perhaps ten times that number will witness the monument from a passing vehicle. Those thrilling, often unexpected views may not be celebrated among the iconic experiences of global prehistory, but they are surely among the most democratic. Through these encounters, Stonehenge lives on as a public space. “

On the other hand we’d like to say how strongly we disagree with the alternative being served up to the public…….

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Never mind the massive new damage and the fact the stones will be hidden from general view for the first time ever, we offer an alternative fact: the short tunnel will ENHANCE the Stonehenge landscape. Bigly.