Representation by Maire Ni Chathasaigh
- Date submitted
- 11 January 2019
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
To whom it may concern:
I am horrified by the plans to drive a massive dual carriageway into the UNESCO World Heritage Site around Stonehenge and cannot understand why they have got this far.
Over the past 2 years Highways England has twice consulted on its plans to drive a massive dual carriageway into the UNESCO World Heritage Site around Stonehenge. Both times the public response was overwhelmingly against the proposal. But despite this huge opposition, Highways England is bulldozing it through, though by its own rules there is no economic case for it.
As every year goes by, archaeological research is finding more and more evidence to show that Stonehenge itself is just the visible centrepiece of a vast planned landscape of ancient structures with their concomitant organic remains, which would be destroyed for ever by the construction of the new road.
The deliberate destruction of the most important and iconic archaeological site in Britain and one of the most important and iconic in the world is something that future generations will never forgive. Such permanent damage to the World Heritage Site, its archaeology and setting, is unconscionable.
UNESCO's advisers say the road construction scheme should not go ahead in its present form.
The extraordinarily rich Blick Mead Mesolithic site is one of many under threat from the new road plans. The archeologists that have been working at Black Mead have raised concerns for the archaeology’s survival: a suggested flyover that forms part of the development would be constructed only metres from the site, affecting the local water table and threatening its organic remains. They say that their "excavations have yielded a remarkable sequence of radiocarbon dates for the site, comprising 16 results spanning every millennium between the 8th and 4th BC. Such a series is unique in north-west Europe... Perhaps we could even go as far as describing Blick Mead as the ‘first place’ in the Stonehenge landscape, one that endured throughout the Mesolithic period and beyond as a culturally significant site. The ancient spring is proving a fount of knowledge about how the pre-Stonehenge environment was known and utilised millennia before the establishment of its famous monument. In the near future, the late Mesolithic may emerge as a new starting point for understanding the area’s better-known archaeology, with Blick Mead at its heart. If the construction of the Stonehenge tunnel and associated developments do go ahead as proposed, however, will these fragile remains survive, and with them their revolutionary new insights about the early establishment of this landscape?" [redacted]
There is a lack of alternative options that would not damage the World Heritage Site in the consultation.
At present, British tax-payers can see their most important ancient monument from the existing road, entirely free – as they should be able to. The loss of view from the projected new road and the resultant need to pay to see the Stones are entirely unjustifiable. Structures as important to national identity as Stonehenge cannot be allowed to be made invisible to British citizens and their images privatised - in the same way that Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Tower of London cannot be allowed to be made invisible to British citizens.
The disturbance of rare bird species such as the Stone Curlew and Great Bustard is only one of the ways in which the projected new road will cause irreversible harm to the environment of the UNESCO site.
Increased noise from more and faster traffic and the accompanying rise in pollution of the UNESCO site would be further dismal consequences of this ill-conceived, unwarranted and unwanted scheme.
It must be abandoned now.
Yours sincerely,
Maire Ni Chathasaigh