John Cridland says there have been plans to upgrade the A303 since 2002 (CBI chief’s one big plea to the chancellor: give me a road tunnel under Stonehenge, 7 November). This is incorrect. I myself attended the first week-long public inquiry into the proposed tunnel scheme, held at the Red Lion in Salisbury, under Sir Jocelyn Stevens’ tenure as chair of English Heritage, in May 1995.
He mentions objections from English Heritage, the National Trust and the Druids, for whom Stonehenge is a sacred site. But far from objecting to the proposed “new” tunnel at the time, those Druid representatives present, including myself, fully endorsed the idea of the tunnel, provided it did not run closer than 660 yards to the site of the monument, in order to obviate vibration damage risk in the substrata.
With the old A344 road already closed to make way for the new visitors’ centre, removing that hopelessly congested strip of A303 from the ancient sacred landscape would in fact create a conservators’ dream – a 5,000-year-old giant stone temple in an almost pristine 5,000-year-old landscape, ie no visual or noise intrusion from the present-day motor car – while Mr Cridland and those from the south-west whose cause he champions speed on their way to London, noiselessly and out of sight, beneath it all.
Rollo Maughfling
Archdruid of Stonehenge and Britain
• The Stonehenge monument is only one part of an enormous and spectacular landscape, and it is not possible to tunnel anywhere near it without destroying the very thing that defines the area as of world importance and justifiably earns world heritage status. Should this really be sacrificed so that London second-homers can avoid the inconvenience of Sunday afternoon delays as they head back to the Great Wen from their Cornish getaways?
Dr Pauline Wilson
Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire
