From Elizabeth Young
Mike Pitts is wrong to say that opponents of the Highways Agency’s Stonehenge
road scheme risk “losing the entire scheme”
(27 October, p 51).
What arouses opposition to the scheme in its present form is the idea that
the road tunnel should be short, so that its cuttings and permanently lit
portals, and some kilometres of new dual carriageway on the A303, will all fall
inside the World Heritage Site. This will not do, simply because it is the whole
monumental landscape, not just the area immediately around the Stones, for which
Britain is internationally responsible under the World Heritage Convention.
Moreover, until we have a better idea of how many visitors there will be in
the long term, there can be no go-ahead for a visitor centre. So much time and
money have already been wasted by English Heritage and the Highways Agency on
bad ideas for Stonehenge from “consultants” that a little more thought is
absolutely necessary.
London
