For more than five millennia, Stonehenge has cut its stark silhouette against the sky. Its great monoliths straddle the horizons of our history and stalk like giants across the landscapes of our imagination.
The stone circle is still part of our culture. On Wednesday hundreds will gather there to celebrate the winter solstice. The sun, as it rises, its first pallid rays reaching us at 8.09am, will no doubt be greeted by all sorts of bizarre rites. Solstice ceremonies can involve anything from red caps to corn oil, seedcake to candles, and banqueting robes to bows tied round your feet. And, of course, there will be the occasional Druid, complete with symbolic sickle and mistletoe sprig.
But our culture will also be putting in a rather less picturesque appearance. Beyond a tall chain-link fence, cars will be on their way to the West Country. The whine of tyres over tarmac will destroy the dawn peace. And even as the light of the year’s shortest day strengthens over the primeval circle, it will illuminate the concrete structure of the nearby visitor centre, casting its light on car-parking spaces, sparkling off the flanks of ranked tourist coaches, shining on walkways and the spikes of barbed wire.
Now, ten years after the site was described as a disgrace, a restoration scheme is being proposed. Stonehenge was donated to the nation by the landowner Sir Cecil Chubb in 1918. It is managed by English Heritage on behalf of the Government, and attracts about 800,000 visitors a year. “It is the single most important heritage icon in our country,” says Dr Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage. “It’s the single thing that people in Texas, for instance, will think of when they think of Britain. When our chairman was in the States during the foot-and-mouth crisis, discussing the problems of tourism at that time, the only thing that people wanted to know was whether Stonehenge was still open. When they found that it was, then they were still happy to come.”
Stonehenge may once have been treated with scant respect. Fallen stones were broken up and carted off to build farm tracks. Hammers could be hired to chip off souvenirs. And during the First World War the RAF petitioned for it to be demolished because it was distracting the pilots from a nearby base. It is still a dangerous distraction. Drivers take their eyes off the road as they pass it, creating a notorious accident blackspot.
But Stonehenge is now appreciated as one of the most important prehistoric monuments in the world. It may not be the largest stone circle, but it is the only one with lintels over the top. In the 1920s, believing the stones to be in danger of toppling, people propped them up with telegraph poles. In 1959 one of the megaliths was reinforced with a concrete core to prevent it from toppling. And since 1978 direct contact with the stones by visitors has been forbidden, except by special arrangement (open to anyone). In 1986 Stonehenge was designated a world heritage site, on a par with the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids at Giza and the Grand Canyon.
And yet the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons described it ten years ago as “a national disgrace” because, though the stones themselves are protected, their setting is not. “The real issue,” Thurley says, “is that the site is bounded by a triangle of roads. Stonehenge is marooned on what is effectively a traffic island. It’s like having Canterbury Cathedral in the middle of a spaghetti junction. You can’t visit the site without seeing the cars. It’s not the sort of experience you would expect when visiting the most important monument of prehistoric civilisation in Europe. It’s a national embarrassment.”
So a revolutionary plan is proposed to remove the clutter of contemporary civilisation. And though a long overdue report from inspectors is still awaited, all the statutory consultees — the environment, countryside and highways agencies for example — are all, for the first time, in agreement upon the proposals. Central to these proposals is the plan to return the landscape as closely as possible to that which would have been seen by our ancient ancestors. “The story of Stonehenge is not just contained within the circle,” says Dr Kevin Brown, the project director. “It is understood through the landscape.” The barrows and ditches, many dug in the days when people used antlers for pickaxes, oxen’s shoulder blades for shovels, give the site its significance. “The stones are merely the focal point,” Brown says.
If plans are finally approved, arable fields will return to open pasture, limiting plough damage to archaeological remains and encouraging wildlife. The 6ft (1.8m) chain-link fence will be removed, though stock fences will have to remain to stop cattle rubbing their bottoms on the stones, dislodging ancient lichens. A moveable rope barrier will also have to be kept. Otherwise the grassland around the monoliths will turn into a mire.
The visitor centre, too close to the stone circle, will be demolished and a new one, complete with exhibition facilities, constructed more than a mile and a half away. For people who don’t want to walk to the site (though those who do will find entrance is free), an environmentally friendly “land train”, a series of trailers on soft tyres, will run along routes that are entirely removable should future generations so wish.
Roads near by will be re-routed. A tunnel will carry the busy A303 underground for about one and a third miles (some lobbied for it to be twice that length but it was deemed not only too expensive but also too complicated and intrusive to ventilate). The A344, which now runs within a few dozen yards of the circle, will become a byway, a rough track with green verges suitable only for bicycles and horses and perhaps creating business opportunities for residents who in the past have complained that the Henge, for all its fame, failed to bring revenue into the region because most of its visitors were only passing by.
The entire cost of the project is estimated at £67.5 million, of which the Government has pledged, but not yet provided, the first £10 million. Thurley is concerned because English Heritage, he says, has been given some “pretty bloodcurdling” budgetary warnings. The Heritage Lottery Fund has promised a further £25 million and English Heritage has put aside funds of its own besides. But about £15 million must still be raised from the public.
Is it worth it? Brown certainly believes so. “This plan is all about the nature of the experience,” he says. “It opens up the opportunity for us to have a more profound understanding.”
Thurley says: “It will allow people to enjoy Stonehenge properly. After a 15-minute walk across unspoilt chalk grass downland, you can sit down in peace and listen to the skylarks as you gaze at the stones.”
The stones that stand, a primeval testimony to mankind’s creativity, to his ingenuity and imagination and engineering skills, should test these same qualities again as we strive to return their site to its original state. As people celebrate the solstice this Wednesday they may well wonder at the mystery of why nobody has planned to do this before.
