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The following update was recently released by our friends, the Stonehenge Alliance.
“The Mission again raised the question regarding the potential impacts on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) attributes of the property, arising particularly from impacts on the integrity and authenticity of the Neolithic and Bronze Age funerary landscape and hence the exploration of alternatives to the A303 passing through the very heart of the WHS and so close to key monuments.”
New Transport Secretary consulting on UNESCO’s Advisory Mission’s report
Dear Supporters,
National Highways has commented on UNESCO’s Advisory Mission’s report following their visit of April 2022 published last month.
Last week, during a period of national mourning, the new Transport Secretary invited Interested Parties to respond to NH’s comments by 28 September. Despite this tight deadline we hope you will be able to do so.
The Mission advised that a less damaging scheme, such as a southern bypass, should be sought and indicated that, at the very least, any tunnel should be extended to the western WHS boundary. National Highways insists that its current scheme would bring benefits to the WHS and that a longer tunnel would not be worth the expense.
The Stonehenge Alliance will send a response to the Secretary of State and share its response in due course.
If you wish to respond we have shared some reactions and links via the link below.
About the Stonehenge Alliance
The Stonehenge Alliance is a group of non-governmental organisations and individuals that seeks enhancements to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and opposes development that would cause it significant harm..
More about us
The petition against the road has almost reached 220,000 signatures. You can sign and share it here.
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| The World of Stonehenge: the British Museum’s “knock out epic” show, but where’s the exhibit explaining the knock out blow to the future of the Stonehenge landscape? |
| The World of Stonehenge, the British Museum’s brilliant exhibition, that is “as magical as a great barrow full of glinting treasure” is a “knock out epic” as art critic Jonathan Jones put it, closes soon on Sunday 17th July. The trouble is that it is so focused on its dazzling prehistoric contemporary culture and sophisticated artefacts that the threat to the future of this iconic World Heritage Site completely passes it by. Calling supporters within reach of London Would you like to help us raise awareness of what’s in store for the World Heritage Site and join Alliance activists on THURSDAY 14 JULY?Visitors to the exhibition shown our leaflet will view the proposed devastating incision into a “landscape without parallel” with horror. WHERE? Meet outside the gates of British Museum, Great Russell St, WC1 3DG WHEN? 11.15am up to 1pm WHAT? Leafleting, displaying our banner, placards and group photo at noon. It’s also a chance to visit the show and enjoy the exhibition before it closes. Redetermination process grinds on … Unfortunately Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, persists with redetermining the very same scheme and is currently consulting on a number of its aspects. We have pointed out contradictions in National Highways’ [NH] submissions which revealed two incompatible facts: If NH implements government policy on carbon reduction, traffic will reduce or stabilise, thus traffic forecasts would no longer justify the scheme. Or, by providing for an increase in traffic, and thus an increase in carbon, NH is planning for a decarbonisation policy failure. Many respondents to the consultation used the opportunity to object to the scheme once more and met the June 10 deadline. … and on In a further query to NH, the Transport Secretary noted “that a number of consultees have raised the issue that it is not clear how the Applicant has arrived at the conclusion that the alternative tunnel routes would only have minimal additional heritage benefits over the Development” and has asked NH why its cultural heritage assessment on this issue has not altered. Our own views on this matter are that less damaging options should be explored, including non-road engineering solutions. Let’s make sure that this government, and future governments, are under no doubt about the unacceptability of driving a damaging dual carriageway and tunnel through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. We hope some of you can come along on Thursday. If you’re travelling via Tottenham Court Road tube station the best exit to walk from is marked ‘Exit 2, Tottenham Court Road.’ |
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| Supporters of the Stonehenge Alliance made a stand at the launch of the World of Stonehenge exhibition last February. |
A message from John Adams OBE, Chair of the Stonehenge Alliance:
An impressive 1,200+ responses to the redetermination consultation were forwarded to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and published by the Planning Inspectorate last week, including responses of those not registered as Interested Parties. A huge thank you to all who managed to send in their comments. These are being analysed by one of our volunteers but it looks as if objectors, NGOs and Stonehenge specialists have stood firm with their resolve strengthened.
The Stonehenge Alliance submitted a raft of new documents which shows that the case for the scheme is even weaker than it was at the Public Examination in 2019. We highlighted that the economic case for the tunnel, already in the red, is now far worse with rising construction costs and a heritage valuation survey that is no longer valid. We also rebut National Highways’ assessment of alternatives, which is not fit for purpose as it failed to acknowledge the Examining Authority’s and Grant Shapps’ opinion that the road scheme would cause significant harm to the World Heritage Site.
Tom Holland, our President, said: “There is only one sane outcome to this process and that is for Grant Shapps to refuse permission for this highly damaging road scheme. Even though UNESCO has threatened to place the site on the List of World Heritage in Danger if the road goes ahead as planned, National Highways remains in complete denial about the impact of its plans for the Stonehenge landscape. This Government-owned company is increasingly clutching at straws in its attempts to justify the desecration of our most iconic World Heritage Site.
“If Grant Shapps refuses to take the sensible course and tell National Highways to go away and come back with something better, then at the very least he should hold a new public examination. The amount of technical information involved is far too great for the Secretary of State to make a new decision without first obtaining the expert advice of a team of independent planning inspectors.”
Updated response to the Statement of Matters on carbon
Some of you might have received a further invitation to comment on National Highways’ updated response on carbon by 10 June. This is a technical paper which the Alliance plans to comment on. We will endeavour to circulate some key points in due course.
ABOUT THE STONEHENGE ALLIANCE
The Stonehenge Alliance is a group of non-governmental organisations and individuals that seeks enhancements to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and opposes development that would cause it significant harm. More about us
The petition against the road is at almost 220,000 signatures. You can sign and share here.
We have not nor ever will change our opinion of the proposed A303 road scheme with its hugely damaging tunnel. Our opinion has remained consistent since this letter (below), nicely summarising the situation, was published in the Daily Telegraph 28 April 2014. We don’t want to lose the free view from the A303, we don’t want the cuttings on either side of the tunnel to remove everything in the road’s path, and we don’t want a flyover landing alongside Blick Mead.
We will continue to resist this damaging Scheme and will lay down in front of the path of the tunnel if it comes to that. All we want is for Unesco to stand firm and not be taken in by late attempts to pretend the Scheme benefits the World Heritage Site. It does not. STAND FIRM UNESCO – BACK US UP PLEASE.
“one of the joys of going on the current A303 is that one gets a glimpse of Stonehenge and I think that is a great benefit and it’s uplifting for people to see”
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As another deadline for the future of the Stonehenge WHS approaches, we have received the following communication from the Stonehenge alliance:
| Dear Supporter, This is a reminder to let you know that the deadline for comments on submissions by National Highways is nearly upon us. We are most concerned that, once again, National Highways is lobbying hard for its discredited Stonehenge road widening scheme to be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport. |
| We believe our list of points make a compelling case for a re-examination of the scheme BEFORE the Secretary of State redetermines a re-application for the very same road scheme. Comments must be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate by 23:59, MONDAY, 4 APRIL 2022 Please email: A303Stonehenge@planninginspectorate.gov.uk |
| Western tunnel entrance and cutting | Photo and image credit: National Highways 2019. More images of the Stonehenge road scheme can be found here. |
| Thank you so much to all our supporters who have sent comments to the Planning Inspectorate. Several of you have pointed out that if you did not register as an “interested party” for the Examination in 2019 you might receive a bureaucratic reply from the Planning Inspectorate as per the graphic below.  DO NOT be discouraged! Your comments will be read, they will make a difference and, we sincerely hope, will be published by the Secretary of State for Transport along with all the others. One of our supporters who took exception to the irksome reply, elicited an informative response from the Planning Inspectorate. The exchange can be read here. |
A paper entitled ‘Keeping Time at Stonehenge’ written by Professor Timothy Darvill, Professor of Archaeology in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Bournemouth University and published in the journal ‘Antiquity’, concludes that the Stonehenge monument served as an ancient solar calendar based on a solar year of 365.25 days, helping people keep track of the days, weeks and months.
“The clear solstitial alignment of Stonehenge has prompted people to suggest that the site included some kind of calendar since the antiquarian William Stukeley,” Professor Darvill said.
He continued, “Now, discoveries brought the issue into sharper focus and indicate the site was a calendar based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days.”
Recent research showed that Stonehenge’s sarsens were added during the same phase of construction around 2500 BC. They were sourced from the same area and subsequently remained in the same formation. This indicates they worked as a single unit.
Professor Darvill analysed these stones, examining their numerology and comparing them to other known calendars from this period. He identified a solar calendar in their layout, suggesting they served as a physical representation of the year which helped the inhabitants keep track of the days, weeks and months.
He further informs, “The proposed calendar works in a very straightforward way. Each of the 30 stones in the sarsen circle represents a day within a month, itself divided into three weeks each of 10 days.”
The distinctive stones in the circle mark the start of each week and the intercalary month of five days and a leap day every four years were also reflected in the design.
“The intercalary month, probably dedicated to the deities of the site, is represented by the five trilithons in the centre of the site.”
“The four Station Stones outside the Sarsen Circle provide markers to notch up until a leap day.”
This means the Winter and Summer solstices would be framed by the same pairs of stones every year.
One of the trilithons also frames the winter solstice, indicating it may have been the new year.
This solstitial alignment also helps calibrate the calendar – any errors in counting the days would be easily detectable as the sun would be in the wrong place on the solstices.
Such a calendar, with 10 day weeks and extra months, may seem unusual today but were adopted by many cultures during this period
“Such a solar calendar was developed in the eastern Mediterranean in the centuries after 3000 BC and was adopted in Egypt as the Civil Calendar around 2700 BC and was widely used at the start of the Old Kingdom about 2600 BC.”
This raises the possibility that the calendar tracked by Stonehenge may stem from the influence of one of these other cultures.
Links
Cambridge University Press ‘Keeping Time at Stonehenge’:
A Press Release from the Stonehenge Alliance:
The Secretary of State for Transport wants to make a new decision on the Stonehenge road scheme. He asked National Highways for responses to five matters he wishes to consider i.e. Alternatives, Policy, Carbon, Environmental Information and Any Other Matters.
National Highways has responded. (See “Documents” tab in this link) and the Secretary of State for Transport has now invited comments on these submissions and any other relevant information.
Comments must be submitted by midnight on 4 April 2022.
The submissions by National Highways are technical and lengthy. The Stonehenge Alliance and its expert advisers are preparing a full technical response which we will share in due course.
However, it is important that the Secretary of State for Transport hears from the wider public on these issues. We’re therefore asking as many people to respond as possible, raising some or all of the points below.
If you can, please make the points in your own words and add any other points you might wish to make.
National Highways has not:
- made any changes to the Scheme to take the 2021 World Heritage Committee Decision into account;
- acknowledged that the Secretary of State found the Scheme’s impact on the proposed western cutting area would be “significantly adverse”;
- fully assessed alternative routes less damaging to the World Heritage Site e.g., a southern bypass route would be cheaper even if there might be some problems with it, while a longer tunnel would reduce impact on the World Heritage Site;
- explored alternatives to hard engineering solutions in the context of safeguarding and enhancing the World Heritage Site – e.g. a package of measures to reduce road traffic, road emissions and improve access to the South West;
- updated the scheme construction costs; nor
- updated the carbon assessment and costs.
Other changes since the Examination closed:
- concern for climate change has increased with the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and the need to take urgent action to reduce emissions, not increase them as any new Stonehenge road scheme would; and
- the Environment Act 2021 sets new ambitions around nature recovery.
Please email your responses by 4 April to: A303Stonehenge@planninginspectorate.gov.uk, remembering to include your name and address.
Many thanks for your help and continued support.
John Adams OBE
Chairman
The Stonehenge Alliance
The critics are unanimous: the British Museum’s new exhibition, The World of Stonehenge, is a triumph.
And so says the Guardian, who have given a glowing 5-star review to the latest extravaganza display of our Neolithic past within the museum’s hallowed halls.
Yet all is not necessarily well at the BM. Yet again, the sponsorship of the museum by petrochemical giants BP has been called into question.
And we would also question the use of the Stonehenge name in the exhibition. Individual exhibits range from across Europe and the UK – as shown by the use of the Nebra Sky Disk (made with Cornish Gold) on the cover of the accompanying catalogue (£35!) Is the Stonehenge name being used because of the money it can draw in? We all know that Stonehenge is a cash cow for English Heritage, Heritage England and the National Trust.
And finally, at the weekend our friends at the Stonehenge Alliance staged a small roadside protest outside the museum, to warn visitors that the Stonehenge World Heritage Site near Salisbury is still ‘under threat’ from a £1.7 billion major road scheme.
As regular readers will be aware, the plans to upgrade the A303 past the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge stone circle will cause “significant” harm to the World Heritage Site.
John Adams, chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, said:
Stonehenge is one of the most impressive megalithic structures in the world and the World Heritage Site has the densest concentration of burial mounds anywhere in Britain.
The road scheme would require massive civil engineering works within the World Heritage Site, with huge damage to this unique landscape. Even the Transport Secretary accepted the road would cause significant harm.
The scheme was firmly rejected by five senior Planning Inspectors and by UNESCO and in 2021 the High Court quashed the development consent for the scheme. The Stonehenge Alliance is asking the Government to think again.
We need a new approach that improves people’s access to the South West without damaging the World Heritage Site or increasing carbon emissions. There are better schemes the government could spend £2bn on.”
In 1849 a young relative of Wordsworth, Emmeline Fisher, wrote Lines on the Opening of Silbury Hill, a poetic apology to the ancestors for an excavation that was going on at that time into the “Green Pyramid of the plains, from far-ebbed Time” as she called it. It commenced:
Bones of our wild forefathers, O forgive,
If now we pierce the chambers of your rest,
And open your dark pillows to the eye
Of the irreverent Day!
We think there may be a much more significant apology due soon, for the gouging of a mile of new dual carriageway through Europe’s most important prehistoric landscape at Stonehenge and the stealing of the free view of the stones currently enjoyed by millions of travellers a year. We’ll all be long gone when the full scale of the loss is fully understood by a future possessing technology inconceivably more sophisticated than ours.
So, we would like to announce a poetry competition, in the form of an apology to the future. The winning entry or entries will be put in an envelope sealed with red wax and placed in a ceramic urn, just like Emmeline’s was, and buried just outside the World Heritage site, an apology for posterity to find!
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Entries please, no longer than 10 lines, with your own choice of title. We’ll publish some of them here in the Journal and elsewhere and the winner will be chosen by a committee drawn from some of the many organisations and groups who have worked so hard for so long to stop this dreadful scheme going ahead. Then, if the worst happens, on the day the first bulldozer is deployed, we will bury the apologies as described. Please send your entries to info@heritageaction.org.uk Good luck!
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Dear Heritage Journal,
I’ve just seen on BBC iplayer a very interesting programme about the Oseberg Viking Burial Ship. This is one of Norway’s most prized archaeological finds due to the extraordinarily well-preserved 1,200-year-old artefacts. Amazingly around 90% of the original longship has been preserved for display, complete with most of the ornately detailed carvings on the boat. All of this preservation is because the site remained permanently damp for 1,200 years and so a lot could be preserved, carbon-dated, and accurately interpreted.
The reason I am saying this is because in Britain we have a hugely important and rich archaeological site which has remained continuously damp for over 10,000 years. That site is called Blick Mead and it is just beginning to reveal how hunter-gatherers evolved to become the culture of people who built the wider Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
Despite its importance, the British Government, English Heritage, and National Trust think it’s acceptable to bore a massive tunnel with a four-lane dual carriageway and a flyover very close to it. Even though it is a scientific fact that this will eventually dry out Blick Mead and seriously damage it – forever!
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More money is needed in the fight against the Stonehenge short tunnel scheme which hands a near-monopoly over even seeing Stonehenge to a quango. If you possibly can, please contribute to the fight opposing it here. ___________________________________________________________
The Heritage Journal 
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