Stonehenge: all’s (too) quiet on the conservation front!

Logically one might expect the main conservation bodies to greet the judge’s ruling with relief: “We are pleased. We did want to re-unite the landscape but it’s fine if the Government will be forced to build a longer tunnel or a realigned road. The damage from a short tunnel was severe and now we can achieve our wishes without it.”

But no, there’s no such public statement, which suggests they are keeping with the Highways England line – that the short tunnel remains the best solution. Shame, an opportunity to come out of this with a degree of credibility is being lost, for if the Government wishes to ignore the judgement and still build a short tunnel they’ll support them.

That the Government does intend to carry on regardless may have been signaled by this Trumpian headline in the Telegraph saying, effectively, let’s ignore UNESCO: “Unesco is a politicised, anti-British basket case – its opinions are an insult“. We shall see in the next three weeks but there’s little doubt that the public silence of English Heritage, Historic England and the National Trust during that time will do their conservation credentials no credit.