You highlight (Stonehenge tunnel: plans for £1.6bn scheme published, 8 February) Highways England’s misguided belief that the scheme will restore a sense of beauty and tranquillity to the ancient landscape around Stonehenge.
Despite the small changes made to the scheme, it will still cause irrevocable damage to a unique piece of our national heritage, and gouge a widened road across the landscape.
If Highways England was serious about “enhancing and protecting” this unique and beguiling place, it would propose a tunnel that is long enough and deep enough to avoid the world heritage site altogether.
As recent archaeological finds show, the earth that surrounds Stonehenge still harbours secrets about our past, and to damage our collective history in this way would be a national scandal.
The erection of the monumental Stonehenge was an ancient people’s attempt to remake the landscape around them in their image. We seem intent in doing the same; only our attempt is a monument to our inability to sensitively conserve our heritage.
Daniel Carey-Dawes
Senior infrastructure campaigner, Campaign to Protect Rural England
• One of the childhood experiences that vividly opened my mind to the narratives of British history, culture and geography was the view of Stonehenge from my parents’ traffic-jammed car on the A303. It has imprinted itself and, in the poetic life of the subconscious, offers myriad insights, emotions and questions. A tunnel will deny all future generations the opportunity to simply see Stonehenge, to “feel” it in the landscape of childhood, and to allow it to seep and insinuate itself into conscious and subconscious thoughts. The tunnel will give English Heritage a cash-cow monopoly and turn history into a consumer product. Its licence to manage the estate expires in 2021. Then what? “TrumpHenge”? A similarly intrusive and distortive project has just broken SSSI-protected rock at Tintagel.
Bert Biscoe
Truro, Kernow
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