Stonehenge: Proposed Road Alterations

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Burghart]

Thank you very much, Sir Graham; it is a pleasure to serve under your careful and kind direction.

I know that it is slightly unusual for an MP from Essex to call a debate on improvements to a road that is not in Essex; indeed, the A303 does not run through Essex and Stonehenge is not within Essex. So I apologise to Members who represent constituencies in the area around Stonehenge that are affected by this road and I also apologise to the Minister, because I know that there is a due process under way that the Government must religiously and necessarily stick to, and that there is a limit on what he can say in the debate today.

However, I also know that at the end of that process it is Ministers who will have the final say on whether this project goes ahead. Consequently, I would like to put a few things on the record now, to ensure that the Minister has heard the concerns that have been raised with me by the archaeological community, who have themselves made submissions to the appropriate consultation.

We find ourselves in the position of having a world heritage site on a rather awkward transport route in Wiltshire. The need to improve the transport network is running up against that of preserving the site known as Stonehenge, making the debate necessary. My personal interest stems from the fact that for a long time I was a teacher and lecturer in history, admittedly medieval history. I began my studies at about 500 AD— [Interruption.] Even by my own standards, that makes my period modern rubbish, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) so kindly puts it.

I grew up in the locality of the site and have spent a great many happy hours within its confines, viewing the stones at sunset and sunrise and taking great pleasure in seeing them in their natural setting. The proposals do not affect the stones themselves. The extraordinary craftwork that is at least 4,000 years old has given us so much insight into the Neolithic period in which the stones were built. A few years ago, the eminent archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson revealed that underneath the perimeter stones were the cremated remains of inhabitants of Britain, dating from about 3,000 BC. Those remains have been analysed and shown to be of people who grew up in many disparate parts of our island. That is to say that even 4,000 years ago, Stonehenge was a meeting place and in some senses a sacred site, where people brought their ailing, or brought their dead to be interred. We all know about the extraordinary bluestones that appear to have been brought from mountains in Wales, as perhaps either an offering or a spoil of war, and which are among the most striking and iconic elements of the assemblage.

The world heritage site itself is considerably larger than the stones. As it was set out in 1986, it covers a wide area, ranging from the long barrows in the west to the Countess roundabout in the east. Some road change plans for within the periphery of the stones are now being consulted on, and I will briefly talk about what we are dealing with.

In the west, we have an extraordinary collection of Neolithic long barrows, and this grouping in a small area is unique in the world. There are eight early Neolithic long barrows across this part of the western valley, where a new cutting for the road is proposed. The grouping is not just unusual; it is entirely of its own. To the east, we find a remarkably precious patch of boggy ground called Blick Mead, the full significance of which has only recently been revealed: a monograph published earlier this year lights on excavations over the past decade.

In its wet environment, Blick Mead keeps organic matter in a deoxygenated state, meaning that the matter does not rot. That creates the most extraordinary catalogue of human activity, going back not just to 3,000 BC when the stones were erected, but to 4,000 years before that, to our Mesolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors. That is to say that the Stonehenge stones are the mid-point of activity between now and the earliest phases of known occupation on the site. I was once told that the lifetime of Cleopatra was closer to the modern day than to the building of the great pyramid at Giza, and this is almost exactly the equivalent—4,000 years back to the stones of Stonehenge and 4,000 years further back to the beginning of Blick Mead. We are only skimming the surface at the moment, but the catalogue enables us to trace the extraordinary transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a settled farming one. It is wholly extraordinary to find any such site anywhere in northern Europe. The site is completely remarkable and must, whatever plans go forward, be preserved. We must seek not to damage it but to protect it. I am sure that there are many ways of doing that, but it must be done.

In the words of the great rock band, Spın̈al Tap:

“Stonehenge! Tis a magic place”

and

“No one knows who they were or what they were doing”.

Blick Mead will enable us to answer the important questions raised by Spın̈al Tap.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Alex Burghart]

I give way to the chair of the all-party parliamentary archaeology group.

[Tim Loughton]

I apologise for arriving slightly after the beginning of the debate, which started early, uncharacteristically for my hon. Friend. Notwithstanding the archaeological academic prowess of Spın̈al Tap, I go back to his point about the extraordinary and unique concentration of barrows at the western end of the site. He referred to eight. Does he acknowledge that two new long barrows were discovered as recently as 2016-17, during surveying work for the potential new road? That is just those that we know about. The archaeology that could be destroyed if the scheme were to go ahead could be even more considerable than he has outlined so far.

[Alex Burghart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks and will turn in a moment to what we do not yet know about Stonehenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Graham, for calling me. My intention was not to speak in the debate at all, not least because I am the MP for North Wiltshire, which is some 20 or 30 miles away from Stonehenge. My constituency therefore does not face the direct impact that will be suffered by, for example, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). He is, of course, prevented from speaking because of his rank as a Minister. Sadly, that rank has never come my way, although there is plenty of time left. One can never tell—it could be on its way.

I enjoyed immensely listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) introduce the debate. Even having studied Stonehenge for 20 years as an MP, and as a medieval historian for a great deal of time before that, I learned an enormous amount from his speech, and I congratulate him on it. There was a huge amount of interesting information there that I, for one, simply did not know, and he made some incredibly important points.

I think my hon. Friend spoke for the people as a whole, and for everyone who is concerned about the issue. Of course, I suspect that hardly anyone wants to destroy or damage the archaeology around Stonehenge. We all want to do everything that we can to preserve it; there is no question about that. We do not want one blade of grass that is of historic interest to be damaged by the proposal, and of course we must do everything that we can to preserve the site. That is why so many experts have been involved in the project for so many years.

I think my hon. Friend has missed two things. First, we have to do something. He mentioned that he has been down to Cornwall on holiday on a couple of occasions, and was once stuck in traffic thanks to President Obama. From listening to BBC Radio Wiltshire, I can tell hon. Members that the A303 at Stonehenge is chock-a-block, morning, noon and night, seven days a week. It is the most extraordinary piece of traffic congestion in the country. That does not only affect local people and tourists trying to get down to the south-west—I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) that it is an important traffic link to the south-west—but the stones themselves.

Secondly, of course it is right that a UNESCO world heritage site should be preserved in the way my hon. Friend describes—no one denies that, but I find it hard to imagine that UNESCO could allow a site such as Stonehenge, one of the finest sites in the world, to have a traffic jam through the middle of it. Quite rightly, we decided to close the branch road that goes up towards Devizes. That road was closed because it damaged the site; it went right through the middle of it. Closing that road has actually made the traffic problems worse, but the A303 is within a yard or two of the heel stone. We are talking about the most appalling traffic jam right beside the stones. We may have traffic jams here, outside the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey, but what we see at Stonehenge is significantly worse than that. I cannot imagine why, from a heritage standpoint, anybody could do anything other than welcome the fact that this road is going to be moved. It has to be moved. It is an absolute bunion—a carbuncle, in the words of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. It is an appalling sight and we have to do something about it.

My third point was missing from the speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar, which was extremely well thought through. Of course we have to preserve the archaeology, but we have to do so in a way that modern people can appreciate, and in such a way that they can live their lives. At the moment, that is not happening.

Something has to happen and people have been considering the matter for generations now. The proposal we have come up with seems to me to be the least bad of the options available to us. Of course, there may be some downsides and a bit of impact from the weight of the flyover and one or two other things, which we will try to make better, but we have got to do something. In reply to an intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar said that that was not a matter for him—he comes from Essex and does not know anything about road engineering. He knows about wetlands and things of that kind, but he does not understand the realities of the place itself. He does not understand the misery that local people and tourists to the west country are currently going through.

In considering my hon. Friend’s very fine and important archaeological points, it is also necessary to consider at the same time how those things can be sustainably maintained—in other words, kept in their pristine condition in a way that allows modern people to live their modern lives.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[James Gray]

Of course, I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend from Essex.

[Tim Loughton]

Or indeed, Sussex. I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sure that everyone here would agree that the imperative is to make sure that when he inevitably gets his ministerial car, it can speed without any encumbrance across the A303 to his constituency. Will he acknowledge that the Stonehenge UNESCO world heritage site was in place almost 5,000 years before the invention of the internal combustion engine? While we absolutely need to make sure that modern life can be compatible with its preservation, will he acknowledge that the problem with the scheme is that it does not sufficiently take account of the heritage value of the site? The site is not just the stones themselves. It is a much wider area that is of significant archaeological importance, as recognised in the wider UNESCO world heritage site—one of only 31 such sites in this country.

[James Gray]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I must correct him on two small points. It shows how little he knows of the geography of the area. If someone were to travel in their ministerial limo from north Wiltshire to London, they would not go anywhere near Stonehenge—they would be some 30 miles away from it. One of the first things he ought to do is to take a glance at a map of Wiltshire and find out exactly what is affected by this proposal.

Secondly, when he says that the UNESCO world heritage site was in place 5,000 years ago, I suspect that UNESCO was not around 5,000 years ago. None the less, that is a small oversight on his part.

Of course, we are all ad idem. We are in agreement. All of us in this room are in agreement on these matters, and it is quite wrong to try to make it into an argument. We are all in agreement. There is no question about that. Of course we must do absolutely everything in our power to preserve the archaeology, the heritage, the wildlife and the biodiversity of the area. It is an incredibly important area. We in Wiltshire are more proud of Stonehenge than almost anything else, apart from perhaps Salisbury Cathedral and Malmesbury Abbey—just to throw them in. Of course we must do those things, but we must do them at the same time as allowing modern people to live their lives.