Letter: A solution for Stonehenge

Lord Kennet
Sunday 02 November 1997 00:02 GMT
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World Heritage Site Stonehenge is not just the henge itself ("Come on, altogether now, heave!", 26 October). It is the whole landscape of barrows and earthworks, 6km square.

Stonehenge and Avebury together form a single World Heritage Site (WHS); a management plan is well advanced for Avebury but not yet begun at Stonehenge. Until there is one, there cannot properly be any decision about the visitors' centre. Larkhill would indeed be "bloody marvellous", as Sir Jocelyn Stevens says, but in the satirical sense: inside the WHS, dispensing a million pairs of feet a year straight on to one of the most inexplicable and vulnerable monuments in the sea of monuments round Stonehenge; putting carparks, and presumably conifers to hide them, on Larkhill. Larkhill was, rightly, rejected as a site for a visitors' centre several years ago.

There was consensus two years ago about a visitors' centre outside the WHS at Countess Roundabout, and this was only stymied when the last government insisted on getting private finance involved: private finance wanted a large return.

The only thing not agreed two years ago was the long tunnel for the A303. It would be expensive (until tunneling becomes cheaper, which it is doing) but it can be dealt with later.

Lord Kennet House of Lords

London SW1

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