Stonehenge: vandalism re-named?

Britain, being a civilised country, does a great deal to conserve it’s built environment, mostly with little fanfare. Take Malvern Hills District Council. In its area it has approximately 1900 buildings listed by Historic England as being of Special Architectural or Historic Interest including farm buildings, bridges, milestones and churches, plus 21 designated conservation areas and 54 Scheduled Monuments. It’s a massive burden on a small Local Authority and a lot of it’s work is hardly known at all.

The same pattern of quiet improvement or protection on a limited budget applies to natural history in the area. Take the two year programme of restoration of four ponds on Castlemorton Common choked with a non-native species by Malvern Hills Trust.

What you see at Malvern is what you get: an obvious need followed by a genuine improvement. Not so at Stonehenge. There, a road project is being trumpeted by Historic England et al as a conservation benefit. No. Only a longer tunnel would be conservation. One which is too short and requires a mile-long new scar across the World Heritage Site is vandalism re-named.

If such a thing was proposed at the Malvern Hills it would be called out for what it is by the Malvern Hills Trust. So how come that English Heritage, Historic England and the National Trust tell people the Stonehenge Tunnel is a conservation measure?