Transport Secretary Mark Harper has today given the go-ahead to a twin-bore 3km tunnel and some 2km of massive approach cuttings to be gouged through the unique landscape of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS). The WHS was designated by UNESCO as of “outstanding universal value” to mankind for its remarkable remains of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
The Stonehenge Alliance has campaigned against the road scheme for many years and is appalled by the Government’s decision in the face of strong advice from its Planning Inspectorate not to proceed. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has also condemned the scheme in its present form and has threatened placing Stonehenge on the World Heritage in Danger List, should it be allowed.
Stonehenge Alliance President Tom Holland says:
“Today, a supposedly Conservative government plans to blow upwards of £2 billion, at a time when the country’s finances are in a shocking state, on a monstrous white elephant of a road development that will permanently disfigure Britain’s most significant and sacred prehistoric landscape. The decision of Mark Harper to green- light the building of a tunnel through a stretch of the World Heritage Site that surrounds Stonehenge is as inexplicable as it is disgraceful. Certainly, no-one can be in any doubt that the scheme will inflict “permanent, irreversible harm” on a landscape that is the supreme icon of British archaeology.”
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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