Stonehenge breakthrough as visitor centre agreed

[Konrad Verhagen]

Stonehenge breakthrough as visitor centre agreed

Location finalised but opinion still split over £25m scaled-down project at edge of World Heritage Site

Maev Kennedy

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 May 2009 16.21 BST



Stonehenge: new visitor centre could be ready by 2012. Photograph: Getty

[Konrad Verhagen]

The site of Stonehenge's visitor centre was finally announced today, scaled down from the original vision but, the government hopes, able to be built in time to lure Olympics visitors in 2012.

The centre, for one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments, is to be built at Airman's Corner, a mile and a half to the west of the stones and just outside the World Heritage Site.

The compromise, after decades of bitter argument and expensive public consultation, immediately split opinion. It was greeted by one archaeologist as "crazy and incomprehensible, archaeologically, educationally and economically", and by another as "probably sensible but inevitably rather dull".

The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, hailed the plans as "sustainable and affordable".

The one part of the announcement likely to be universally welcomed is the determination to close the A344 at its junction with the A303. The fork in the road is not only one of the worst bottlenecks on a main route to the south-west, and the site of many accidents, but is so close to the stones the minor road actually clips the Heel Stone, part of the ancient entrance to the sacred site.

[Konrad Verhagen]

The announcement marks the final abandonment of the ambitious project to replace the present squalid facilities, damned 20 years ago by the parliamentary public accounts committee, as "a national disgrace". The vision, intended to be a reality by the millennium, was of a £57m centre to the east of the site, with the A303 buried in a tunnel leaving the stones in green and sheep-nibbled tranquillity. That collapsed when the government abandoned the tunnel on cost grounds, the estimate having soared to £500m, and launched another consultation.

In true Stonehenge style the announcement came five months late for the promised December decision, and the projected cost has already risen to £25m from the £20m estimate of a year ago.

Barbara Follett, the culture minister, described Stonehenge as "absolutely at the heart of our national history and heritage", but added: "Everyone agrees, however, that the way it is presented to visitors is far short of ideal. Consensus on how to improve visitor facilities has eluded stakeholders for far too long, and so I am delighted that we now have plans to move forward."

[Konrad Verhagen]

The proposals were welcomed by Barry Cunliffe, professor of archaeology and chair of English Heritage, which manages the monument, and Dame Fiona Reynolds, director of the National Trust, which owns thousands of acres of surrounding farmland.

It was also welcomed by Tim Darvill, professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University, who, with Geoffrey Wainwright, was the most person recent to excavate at the site: "It is a good scheme which has many attractions, not least the fact the visitors' centre will be on the edge of the world heritage site, and that the connection to Stonehenge follows an existing road line and thus has minimal archaeological impact."

However Tim Schadla-Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, said: "I find it incomprehensible that the centre is going to be so far from the monument." He added that the site would make it impossible for visitors to understand the monument in its landscape context while the open setting of the centre itself would "stick out like a sore thumb".

Julian Richards, an archaeologist who has worked for most of his life in and around Stonehenge, said that while the plans solved the objective of getting the centre away from the listed heritage site, and off National Trust land, the compromise was dull. "This is probably the best available solution, but for many people this is going to mean quite a long, and to be honest, rather dull walk. The other proposals had the virtue of a dramatic moment when you crested a hill and suddenly saw the stones before you. It is also not at all clear how they are going to get visitors who cannot walk so far – I suspect there'll have to be a shuttle bus."

Given that funding sank the last attempt, yesterday's announcement was vague on how the money would be raised this time – "through a range of private and public sources including English Heritage, Heritage Lottery Fund, the Highways Agency, Department for Culture Media and Sport, and the Department for Transport". It is clear the government has no intention of meeting the entire bill: "The level of public funds committed will be conditional on meeting the rigorous requirements for approving major public projects."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/may/13/stonehenge-visitors-new-centre