It is the Awards season and from the Baftas to the Oscars to the Oliviers there comes a point in every major awards show that the lights dim, a soulful ballad is sung and the images of people and careers lost during the previous year build and crossfade on the big screen.
Picture then a time lapse video of the sun rising and falling behind the Stonehenge Stones as Johnny Flynn plays a melancholy faux folk instrumental as the great and the good of the world of Archaeology in the UK mourns the passing of the Stonehenge Tunnel and its promise of an eight figure pay day for archaeology.
Time to remember…
In Memoriam.
Almost three decades ago, as the Millennium approached, a conference agreed that a 2.5-mile (4 km) long bored tunnel; was the right solution to both the problem of traffic congestion on the A303 at Stonehenge and to the long held wish of archaeologists and conservationists to remove the road from the vicinity of the iconic Neolithic monument and return the site of a state of nature, if not to its state during prehistory which is, of course impossible.
However, in response to that advice, with classic Whitehall, Treasury driven, sensitivity, the Blair government instead proposed a much cheaper “cut and cover tunnel” in which to bury the famous road to the West Country.
Unsurprisingly the plans were criticised by a roll call of organisations led by the conservation charity, and major local landowner, the National Trust, and transport campaigners Transport 2000 who found the plan inappropriate for a nation and a transport policy, heading into the twenty first century.
[Imagine a trench the width of two dual carriageways slicing through some of the most sensitive archaeology in Britain and you get the picture, but while it soon ditched cut and cover as an non starter, out of respect we won’t mention that the Government stuck with a short tunnel option down to 2024]
The Government backed off and with the deadline of the Millennium now receding in the distance like a solstice sunrise in a rear-view mirror of a car stuck on the way to Winterbourne Stoke, in 2002 it published new plans. This time for a bored tunnel of 1.3 miles (2.1 km) south of the monument.
[And no. There never was a plan to burrow under the stones themselves- that was fake news.]
The tunnel would actually be part of a plan to upgrade the A303 to a dual carriageway and would cost a whopping £183 million.
While a definite improvement on the earlier proposal for cut and cover open heart of the English countryside surgery the National Trust, English Heritage, UNESCO [Did I mention that the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site [WHS] had been added to the World Heritage List in 1986?], the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Council for British Archaeology] and many local groups all protested at the plan, stating that, among other issues, the cutting masking the approach to the tunnel entrance would bisect a significant prehistoric track running between Stonehenge and the nearby river.
Instead the campaigners proposed a tunnel of at least 2.9 km long which would avoid most of the known major archaeological sites within the World Heritage Site landscape.
[“Known” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as archaeological research within the wider Stonehenge and Avebury landscape was revealing it to be far richer and more densely occupied and engineered in prehistory than previously understood- but that is what archaeology does, it adds to knowledge and sometimes, while not stopping development and change, greater knowledge does give planners more problems to solve.]
The campaigning organisations also noted it might be the last chance to bury the road completely.
[I wonder what they would say today? But I am running ahead here…]
The Government was now in trouble. It had a plan which was unpopular with the very group of people it was supposed to please, the heritage sector, and the environment was becoming an increasingly significant political factor, especially in the south of England- just Google, the Winchester Bypass protest, the Battle of the Beanfield and Swampy.
But there was a well tried way out for Whitehall. If in doubt, or in political trouble, call a public enquiry…which the Government did in 2004.
In his enquiry report planning inspector, Michael Ellison sided with the critics in concluding,
“The physical loss of archaeological remains, the changes to the land form in these sections, and the scale of the new highway would adversely affect the authenticity of the site and more than offset the benefits of the proposed tunnel in the central area. The published scheme would represent the largest earthwork ever constructed within the
World Heritage Site; a feature that would contribute nothing to the authenticity.”
but then he proceeded to have it both ways, agreeing with the Government that,
“…after taking into account the requirements of local and national planning, including the requirements of agriculture, that it is expedient for the purpose of improving the A303 between points A and B on the plan referred to in the Line Order for a trunk road to be provided along the route shown in the Line Order.”
However, while the planning inspector was engaging in his logical gymnastics atop an environmental tightrope, the bill for the project had been doubling to some £470 million. A fact which led to the Government withdrawing the project on cost grounds in July 2005.
Nonetheless, the then Highways Agency [there will be several rebrandings of the Government’s road builder in the course of this story] still included the tunnel as one of its planned projects, but in order to cover itself against accusations of breaking promises [by now both the heritage lobby and local people who wanted traffic congestion eased were becoming increasingly grumpy at the delays and changes of mind], the Government’s
road building body pushed the start of construction to 2008 at the earliest.
Having tried a planning enquiry Whitehall now tried another tested method of passing the buck, forming a steering group, which was set up in October 2005 with the objective of identifying an “option in keeping with the special requirements of the location that is affordable, realistic and deliverable.” [deliverable being Whitehall speak for cheap
enough not to scare the Treasury and capable of being pushed through planning, ideally within a generation].
The review presented five options several of which somehow managed to store up yet more problems, including being criticised for damaging to both the archaeology and the biodiversity of the World Heritage Site, including the population of the rare Stone Curlew, as well as barn owls, bats, and the wider chalk grassland habitat of Salisbury Plain.
[Remember those Curlews]
No less than five options for works on the A303 and nearby roads were now under consideration including diverting the A303 itself and closing the less used A344.
If in doubt call another another public consultation?
The Government did exactly that, announcing further deliberations which ran between January and April 2006.
However, with the cost of the project having almost trebled to £540 million, in December 2007 Roads Minister Tom Harris short circuited the entire process and cancelled the project again.
English Heritage [which was then still the Government heritage advisor and regulator as well as operator of what passed for the Stonehenge visitor facilities at the time, [essentially a car park, a kiosk, some toilets and a tunnel under the A344] said it was “disappointed”.
However, the campaign group Save Stonehenge (the future Stonehenge Alliance) were pleased with the outcome.
The Highways Agency announced grudgingly that they would continue to make improvements to the A303 where they could.
Meanwhile in the outside world there was a banking crash and worldwide recession which put further pressure on Government spending.
Twenty ten saw the general election and the narrow victory of what became the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition who would now have a go at
1. Government, and
2. Sorting out the problem of the A303 and Stonehenge.
Yet another revised proposal suggested the closing the A344 between Stonehenge Bottom and Byway 12 and closing also part of the B3086 with the idea of improving the environment by removing at least some tarmac from the environs of the Stones.
A new roundabout was proposed to smooth traffic by replacing the Airman’s Corner junction.
Improvements would also be made to the Longbarrow roundabout on the A303.
The proposals went to a planning enquiry beginning in June 2011 and astonishingly [in this story at least] work began a year later on a £27 million project which would make significant improvements to the environment of Stonehenge north of the A303.
A section of the A344 was closed and grassed over and underpass beneath the road at the monument entrance was also closed.
A smart new visitor centre was also built away from the stones themselves at Airman’s Corner on the A360, where Shuttle buses would take visitors who wanted more than a view, a cup of tea and a guidebook from the gift shop, the 2.4 km.to the Stones themselves.
At the same time Government sleight of hand worked to get the national portfolio of Historic sites, including Stonehenge off the Government books by splitting English Heritage into two sperate bodies., Historic England which would handle regulation and planning issues and the reborn English Heritage which would be spun off as a self supporting charity, subsidised by its income from its major sites, including Stonehenge.
[That has worked out about as well as you might expect, but it is a story for another day, although hopefully not an In Memoriam.]
Anyway, in spite of the new visitor attraction becoming one of the most popular in England, and becoming one of English Heritage’s most significant cash cows, there remained the sense of unfinished business around the A303 itself.
In January 2012 local councils along the A303 corridor and the South West Local Enterprise Partnership discussed setting up “a consortium of Local Authorities to develop and take forward a new scheme for improvements to the A303/ A358/A30 and to “develop an
effective lobbying framework so that we can take a planned approach to raising our profile both nationally, regionally and locally”.
Meanwhile in a pincer movement on Government a survey conducted by Somerset County Council in 2012 found more than 90% of commuters and businesses in the South West backed an upgrade of the A303.
Then in April 2013 reports emerged that Chancellor [and future chair of Governors of the British Museum] George Osborne was giving consideration to “…adding lanes to the A303 – known all too well to holidaymakers – which runs from Basingstoke through Wiltshire (past Stonehenge) and Somerset to the South West of England”.
Three years later, on 12 January 2017, the Transport Secretary, Chris [failing] Grayling, [a fervent Brexiter previously best known for issuing a contract to supply ships to a company which owned no ships] gave the project, including the so-called short dual bored tunnel, the go-ahead, stating that
“…it will transform the A303, cutting congestion and improving journey times”.
However, not everyone was so optimistic, even in traffic blighted rural Wiltshire.
The chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, Andy Rhind-Tutt, described the tunnel plan as a “self-destructing time bomb”. A time bomb which, he claimed, would “do nothing” for traffic problems in the area.
Meanwhile the broad based Stonehenge Alliance opposed the tunnel on environmental, archaeological and transport policy grounds stating,
“We object strongly to the short tunnel scheme and address archaeological, natural environment, landscape and transport considerations. We highlight the incompatibility of the short tunnel project with Government’s commitment to the World Heritage Convention, its own planning guidance and policies, and the widely agreed World Heritage Site Management Plan 2015. We note a number of statements in the Technical Appraisal Report that indicate the scheme cannot be considered ‘value for money’.”
It would take nine more years, a series of court cases and £179 million for Mr Rhind-Tutt and the Stonehenge Alliance to be proved right.
Particularly piquant in the era of Brexit and taking back control, the row had also taken on an international aspect. The United Nations body UNESCO, which administers and monitors World Heritage Sites such as the Stonehenge and Avebury landscape, stated that the tunnel could have an adverse impact on the World Heritage Site, and its “outstanding universal value.
In 2019 UNESCO condemned the project outright and the controversy over the project would now take place against the threat that one of the most iconic heritage sites in the world would lose its World Heritage Site status..
However, with the UK Government, and that part of the archaeological world which either supported, or at least did not object to, the tunnel, UNESCO might as well have not existed.
As it was required to do Highways England [a rebranding of the former Highways Agency] held consultations on the scheme in 2018.
However, the organisation was criticised over the restricted scope of the consultation, only their own preferred option was on the table, and also for the limited consultation outside of Wiltshire. The impression seemed to be that the Government and its arms length road builder wanted to treat a major project on an internationally recognised site of “outstanding universal value” as merely a local planning issue for Wiltshire.
A cost of £1.6 billion and a planned start date in 2021 were punted while English Heritage, the National Trust and Historic England were now being quoted as supporting the concept of the tunnel albeit with some concerns over details.
Well sort of…English Heritage was doing its usual thing of choosing its battles carefully and not condemning the project outright while still expressing concerns over sometimes significant aspects of the plan.
In fact there was a fairly fundamental concern in that the western tunnel portal within the World Heritage Site, could be sited in a way to cause significant damage to the view of the Midwinter sunset. A date which was now understood to be crucial to the interpretation of the monument.
Whilst the Stonehenge Alliance and Friends of the Earth remain opposed as they always had been, a newer organisation, the Campaign for Better Transport now also stepped up to oppose the scheme.
Many environmentalists now argued that the A303 tunnel and upgrade was a 1980’s solution to a twenty-first century transport problem, not least in its controversial contribution to meeting the Government’s Net Zero carbon targets. An issue which by now was leading to Government losses in the courts as it was found to have failed to properly consider issues of carbon and climate change in the planning of various road building schemes.
The respected National Audit Office which scrutinised Government spending for, among other things, value for taxpayers money, also got in on the act issuing a report which led its then head Sir Amyas Morse, now Lord Morse, to warn in May 2019 in a blistering example of Civil Servant speak worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby,
“The tunnel at Stonehenge is currently only just value for money by the Department’s own business case. Based on experience, project costs tend to grow rather than fall, at least in the early years. It will take a very special effort by the Department [for Transport] to protect public value up to completion.”
Adding to the Government’s woes the outside world was also taking note of what was being proposed.
In July 2019, UNESCO went public renewing its condemnation of the A303 proposal and urged the government to not approve the scheme, while other objectors heavily engaged in the process included, the Consortium of Archaeologists and the Blick Mead Project Team, the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, international heritage charity ICOMOS UK and the Avebury Society.
However, in early 2020 the then Chancellor of the Exchequer [and future Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak announced support for the tunnel and on 2 November 2020, the then Transport Secretary Grant Shapps [previously best known for selling get rich quick schemes using an assumed name], granted the crucial Development Consent Order [DCO] for the project.
In making that announcement, Mr Shapps, overruled the Government’s own Planning Inspectorate which found the project would cause irrevocable harm to the landscape within the World Heritage Site, stating in its final report that, having considered all factors, cultural, environmental and economic, the Examining Authority [ExA], that is the planning inspectors, found,
“These factors lead us to the conclusion that the adverse impacts of the Proposed Development would strongly outweigh its benefits. The ExA therefore finds that pursuant to s104(7) the NPSNN presumption in favour of granting consent for the application does not apply in this case. Having regard to all the matters referred to in Chapter 7, the conclusion reached is that development consent should not be granted. The ExA finds that the case for the grant of development consent for the Proposed Development is not made out and recommends accordingly.”
Nonetheless, Highways England, backed up by Government’s led by a bewildering and sometimes very short-lived series of Conservative Prime Ministers backed the A303 upgrade project which by now comprised,
A bypass north of the village of Winterbourne Stoke, with a viaduct taking the road across the Till valley.
The construction of a new west of the existing junction west of the then existing junction on the A303/A360 Devizes–Salisbury road. The junction would fall outside the boundary Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
.
The so-called, short tunnel option tunnel with a dual bore tunnel 3.3 km (2.1 mi) long taking the A303 past Stonehenge, and removing forever the famous “free” view of the stones which was available to passing motorists for a few seconds on a day when the traffic was flowing on the A303 and for minutes or even hours, during the infamous Bank Holiday traffic jams, and,
Another the junction between the A303 and A345 at Amesbury [of Bronze Age archer fame] would also be developed.
Highways England also announced a series of expensive contracts with a consortium of construction companies led by FCC Construcción (from Spain), WeBuild (from Italy) and BeMo Tunnelling (from Austria).
Mace was contracted to undertake quantity surveying, cost consultancy and contractor liaison for the project.
While Wessex Archaeology was chosen as lead contractor for archaeological work associated with the project at a budgeted cost of £35 million.
Cynics pointed out that they had already seen a similar course of action by the proponents of another highly controversial and also ultimately doomed, high profile construction project, Boris Johnson’s Garden Bridge over the Thames in central London. The alleged idea was to front load costs so that paying off the disappointed contractors would effectively make the project impossible to cancel.
Meanwhile the Stonehenge Alliance headed for the courts amid accusations from some archaeologists that it was misrepresenting how archaeology is done, was at risk of appearing to traduce the professionalism of archaeologists such as those who would be employed on the project by Wessex, and even that the Alliance was aligning itself
with Blood and Soil Eco-Fascists who were attacking Stonehenge Tunnel project on Social media including on X-Twitter.
And by the way, who were these popular historians like Michael Wood and Chair of the Stonehenge Alliance Tom [the Rest is History] Holland, to second guess professional development archaeologists and a panel of respected academics who had been appointed to advise Highways England?
And then there were the New Agers, and self style Druids, as well as Arthur Pendragon himself…
In fact what was becoming apparent was that archaeology was, is and remains a house divided, as more than twenty equally respected academics went on the record to oppose the A303 project on archaeological grounds alone.
And in a democracy isn’t everyone entitled to have their point of view heard, and their day in court, especially if it is possible the Government has acted unlawfully?
Much of the archaeological establishment appeared not to care that the DCO might be unlawful and that the Government was deliberately side-lining the international body overseeing the most outstanding examples of the historic and natural environment on the planet, UNESCO.
Focussing these divisions, in February 2021, campaigners were granted a High Court hearing to determine if a judicial review should be held, and this was upheld.
It was re-iterated that Stonehenge and other sites in the UK could lose their World Heritage status if the UK Government did not curb “ill-advised development” and in July Mr Justice Hiolgate ruled that the decision made by Mr Shapps to green light the project, had indeed been “unlawful”.
Unlawful in fact on two key grounds: that the impact on archaeology had been considered collectively , not on individual sites, and that he had failed to properly consider alternatives to the scheme, such as a long tunnel with both portals falling outside the World Heritage Site instead of just one.
Meanwhile, in August 2021 Highways England rebranded once again becoming National Highways. However, its luck, plans, and to its opponents, its operational cynicism and questionable competence, did not change however.
In spite of the project once again receiving the go ahead in July 2023, with a fresh Development Consent Order being issues on 14 July, the project remained stalled because within weeks the Stonehenge Alliance had raised the money to began a fresh legal challenge in the High Court.
While in September 2023 UNESCO upped the ante when the World Heritage Committee meeting agreed to place the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site on the List of World Heritage in Danger if road scheme proceeded.
The UK Government was placed on the naughty step and requested to submit further information regarding modifications and a State of Conservation report to the World Heritage Centre by 1 February 2024.
The project would face public scrutiny by the World Heritage Committee.
It was also noted that the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down project, to give the Stonehenge Tunnel Project its official name, did not appear in the Chancellor’s Spring statement detailing Government spending on infrastructure projects.
Curious that…
Nonetheless, for a time things seemed to be going the Government’s way, Mr Justice Holgate dismissing the latest legal moves by the Stonehenge Alliance in February 2024. A decision which was promptly appealed.
However the legal road was running out and, while a separate court case relating to a different development project continued to hold up the reinstatement of the project, opponents of the scheme were now losing further bids for Judicial Review and National Highways was continuing its policy of reminding people that the project was a goer as far as they were concerned, including causing disruption to traffic on the A303 by laying heavy duty roadside power cables for the construction phase.
However, with the legal playbook still not entirely worked out- the Stonehenge Alliance could even have ended up taking the case to Europe, everything changed after the 2024 general election and the election of Keir Starmer’s Labour Government,
Remember how the money for the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel project had not appeared in the conservative Government’s spending plans?
Under huge pressure to find budget savings to fill an alleged “Black Hole” in the national finances left by Mr Sunak and the Conservatives, incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced within weeks of coming into office that the government would not proceed with the Stonehenge tunnel project as it fell into a category of previously announced spending which was both “unfunded” and “unaffordable”.
Surely, with a General Election looming, the Conservatives had not played politics with the hopes and expectations of Conservative voters in constituencies along the A303, not to mention the archaeologists who expected to trouser £35 million quid and kept a dead project alive simply to appear to support drivers and put one over on the environmental lobby, and international bodies like UNESCO?
Indeed, had Rishi Sunak listened to the weather forecast the day he called that General Election and stayed to chat to D-Day veterans instead of flying back for an interview with ITN, and won another term of Government against the odds, facing a financial hole of their own making, would the Conservatives have cancelled the project too and for the same reason as Labour?
We will likely never know.
Following a statutory pause to receive submissions, in March 2026, the Department for Transport under Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander formally revoked the Development Consent Order for the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down project.
In one of those infinitely useful, because they are infinitely flexible, Whitehall phrases the Department justified the cancellation by citing “exceptional circumstances”.
The most exceptional circumstance being that the estimated cost of the project had ballooned to what campaigners alleged could be closer to £3 billion.
[All the while, publicly at least, the Department for Transport continued to quote the pre-Covid, inflation free, cost of £1.7 billion for the entire project.]
Meanwhile, it has been reported that, by the time Ms Alexander announced the revocation of the Development Consent Order the project had been already been funded to the tune of at least £179.2 million.
The good news is that, while the book deals will now never be signed and the BBC documentaries greenwashing the project, will no longer be made, the BBC reported that at the time of cancellation in 2024 £4.6 million of that money had been spent on field archaeology focussed on the two tunnel portals alone, with the likelihood that figure would be shown to have increased substantially if archaeological inputs across the whole of the development process is taken into account, which is exactly how it should be.
Looking ahead, the revocation of the Development Consent Order means that any new project within the Stonehenge landscape, short tunnel, long tunnel, south around, or whatever other response to need and technology the second quarter of the twenty first century brings to transport, will require an entirely new planning process.
And with their habitat currently safe from the 360 degree tracked excavators, the Stone Curlews are still there and would once again have to be taken into account, not to mention ten thousand years at least of archaeology.
Archaeologists graduating in the late 1980’s and early1990’s are now approaching retirement having spent their entire careers with the prospect of working on a large infrastructure project on one of the UK, if not the world’s most sensitive and important prehistoric landscapes.
It was the same for some of the protesters including the highly respected Dr Kate Fielden, who put thirty years of work into trying to make the authorities think again about how to treat the Stonehenge landscape and who did not quite live to see the final demise of the project.
Dr Fielden is commemorated by a painting of one of her favourite views of the Stones, which is now in the Wiltshire Museum, but to adapt what was once said of Sir Christopher Wren, and apply it to Dr Fielden and the other campaigners, “If you seek their monument look around you”, at chalk downland on a World Heritage Site which is not sliced across by a dual carriage way, where archaeologists can develop conservation and research strategies to an archaeological time table, not that of a developer.
There is also the hope that cheaper, and more sustainable, efforts might yet alleviate the traffic problems in local villages between Salisbury Plain and Salisbury which everyone accepts continue to exist.
Meanwhile, short of a complete gutting of archaeological and environmental checks and balances in planning, even if the A303 Stonehenge tunnel project were to be revived imminently, archaeologists graduating in 2026 could well spend much of their own careers doing the same.
And remember finally, while we mark the passing of the Stonehenge Tunnel [at least for now], other Stone Circles are available.
Lead Image: the First Stonehenge Tunnel Plan [Possibly?], thePipeLine
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