Tunnel under Stonehenge scrapped (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Tunnel under Stonehenge scrapped

2:59pm Thursday 6th December 2007

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A plan to build a tunnel under Stonehenge has been axed.

The Department of Transport reviewed plans to build a 1.3 mile tunnel along with a bypass to the west of the monument.

But government ministers decided that the estimated £500 million bill for the scheme was too high.

Fleur de Rhe-Philipe, Wiltshire County Council cabinet member for the Environment, Transport & Economic Development, said: "We are disappointed the Government has decided not to go ahead with the upgrading of the A303 at Stonehenge.

Plans to improve the A303, one of the major arterial roads to the West Country, have been in the works for more than 20 years.

"After many years of discussion, a widely supported scheme had been developed which solved the traffic problems on the A303 past Stonehenge and improved the setting of the stones, but the opportunity has now been lost," Coun Fleur de Rhe-Philipe said.

Initially it was believed that the schemes would cost less than £200 million.

But the price tag soared as engineers discovered that the road building project would take place on soft and weak chalk and on land with a high water table on that section of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

The Stonehenge scheme was part of a raft of improvements for the A303 whose stretches of single carriageway have struggled to cope with the sheer weight of traffic.

While many parts of the project attracted huge opposition, the proposal to route the A303 through a tunnel was the one bit of the scheme which received wide backing.

Bodies including the Council for British Archaeology, the International Council for Monuments and Sites and the National Trust, were among those advocating a longer tunnel to protect Stonehenge, a World Heritage Site.

Supporters of the tunnel argued that it would remove roads from the stones in Wiltshire which are believed to date back to 3,100 BC.

The use of the stones remains a matter of debate, with some believing it was used for human sacrifice and others astronomy.

The decision to axe the road schemes was welcomed last night by Chris Woodford, spokesman for the Save Stonehenge campaign.

"On balance it is good news, because our fear is that they would press ahead with a comprehensive road scheme and that would have been the wrong thing to do."

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