
The Battle for the Future of Stonehenge - fredley
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/08/the-battle-for-the-future-of-stonehenge
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ggm
Typical planners nightmare: they all know a better tunnel would work, but
nobody has the balls to propose asking for the money and beurocracy demands
the people who could make it happen, won't make it happen.

It's at _best_ a political football. At worst, a victim of progress.

(spent time here as a kid in the sixties)

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bambax
> _Simply widening it is unthinkable: the Stonehenge heritage site is a
> precious prehistoric landscape._

Looking at it on Google Maps, it seems the south of the road is just fields.
It's unclear why the road can't be widened and a tunnel would be needed.

[https://www.google.fr/maps/place/51°10'38.8"N+1°49'33.4"W/@5...](https://www.google.fr/maps/place/51°10'38.8"N+1°49'33.4"W/@51.177448,-1.8281397,549m/)

~~~
grahamm
It is a very sensitive area for conservationists and historians. Pretty well
guarantee that if they started to dig a hole to build a new road they would
find something of interest that would delay the build and make the cost sky
rocket.

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mirimir
I wonder how long Carhenge will last?[0] Probably not very long, I guess.
Rust.

0) [http://carhenge.com/wp-content/gallery/carhenge-1/FOC_bw-
pic...](http://carhenge.com/wp-content/gallery/carhenge-1/FOC_bw-pic.jpg)

~~~
alex_young
Concretehenge should last I think:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge)

~~~
dev_north_east
What about Achill-henge? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achill-
henge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achill-henge)

:D

~~~
mirimir
That went up in one weekend! Using stock concrete slabs, I guess. Maybe the
sort they use for bridges, given their size and shape.

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Theodores
The funniest thing about Stonehenge is the obsession that it was all about
some type of religion. Read any BBC article on Stonehenge for an example of
this or watch any BBC documentary.

It is the default myth where all specifics can be imagined or presented
earnestly in a learned TV programme. Many assumptions go into this including
the idea that our ancestors needed some convoluted religion instead of some
connection with the world around them. Anyone can project their fictional
quasi-religion onto what our obviously ill educated ancestors thought, it is
so easy, like a mirror.

I wonder if in 5000 years time there will be people making similar
observations regarding airports and placing their own idea of what our
primitive religion must have been to have created these things, making
connections regarding the orientation of the runways and some variant of the
Mayan calendar.

Stonehenge is a gift that keeps on giving for the industry that surrounds it.
People that are involved on this gravy train are up there with firemen and
nurses in that their work is so much more worthy than that of your typical
office admin worker or shop assistant.

I mean, who wouldn't want to protect England's most treasured monument?

Meanwhile the more interesting history of England does require some
intellectual curiosity rather than idle thoughts about embellished mystery.
Stonehenge invites tourists in to engage with some mystical bullshit. Who
cares that there are many, many other vintage monuments and stone circles in
South West England, there for anyone with a proper Ordnance Survey map and
walking boots to discover and enjoy. The thing is that Stonehenge creates a
spectacle, other neolithic stone circles are just that, some stones in a
circle and can be seen as that without having to go into some quasi-religious
awe.

Also quite useful for this awe and wonder is that most things from pre-history
was made from bio-degradable materials. Our ancestors could have had the most
amazingly crafted houses with furniture made from willow but we would never
know they just louched about on comfy willow couches as all that remains are a
few things like Stonehenge, meaning that BBC TV programmes insist that
everything was all about some mystery religion.

~~~
learc83
My mom bought a shadow box filled with coffee beans a tiny grinder, miniature
mugs and other scaled down coffee accessories. The word "Coffee" was written
prominently in 3 dimensional letters.

She doesn't even particularly like coffee. She just bought it to cover up her
old landline phone jack on the kitchen wall, but I keep telling her it looks
like she built a coffee shrine.

I'm certain that if archeologists found it 5,000 years in the future, they'd
construct elaborate stories about our daily devotions to the deity we called
_Coffee_.

~~~
bluedino
Wait until future civilizations start digging up Startbucks's

~~~
elliekelly
Or tanning salons. Future generations will be horrified people cooked
themselves and willingly gave themselves cancer in the name of "beauty."

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sandworm101
1.7 Billion ... for a couple miles of tunnel? Through/under green fields? That
is an insane amount of money.

Put down some gravel and pave a road. Any artifacts will be safer under the
road than if dug up for a tunnel. If you dont want to see the road, box it in
above ground. Plant hedges around it. Dont rip up history just because you
dont want to spoil someone's view.

~~~
shatnersbassoon
There already is a road there. That’s the whole point. It’s one of the busiest
in SW England and it is only ~200m away from the monument. The whole area
(I.e. the “view”) is a protected historic landscape and it is blighted by the
road. The plan is expensive because it is a bored tunnel. It is where the
entrances of the tunnel are that is controversial - the middle of the tunnel
will be deeper than the archaeology.

~~~
grahamm
On a weekend just have to avoid the road there. Yes it is busy but what makes
it so awful is everyone slowing down to 20mph so they can gawk at it. Then
there is the inevitable shunts as someone forgets to brake in a line of
traffic. Personally I would plant a hedge to shield view from the road. This
in itself will make traffic flow better. Of course hedge will just not fit in
with the Salisbury plain landscape. Stonehenge was put there originally for
its long views of the horizon and the sun rising/setting.

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yardstick
So the government allocated £1.7B for tunnels. While I don’t know how much of
that is for that actual tunnel construction, it seems quite excessive given
the landscape. It’s not London where tunnelling anywhere runs the risk of
encountering other tunnels/infrastructure/WW2 bombs/etc.

Makes me wonder what Elon Musk would charge?

~~~
m-i-l
Original article says it is £1.7bn for just under 2 miles of tunnel. For
comparison, the new Crossrail is £15.4bn for 73 miles including 13 miles of
twin tunnels under central London[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail)

~~~
isostatic
That's rather disingenuous, the tunnelling contracts for Crossrail's 42km of
tunnels came to £1.5b in 2011, or £1.8b today - £40m per km.

The tunnelling was 10% of the total cost of the project.

Stonehenge requires 6km of tunnels, which would be £250m at crossrail rates,
if that was also 10% of the total cost that would be a £2.5b project

The tunnels aren't comparable either -- each bore of crossrail is 7.1m, I
believe the ones needed for the road tunnels would be larger than that, but on
the other hand crossrail project included electrification of the GWR to
Reading and resignalling.

~~~
m-i-l
Crossrail is also Europe's largest construction project - some of the numbers
are incredible, e.g. "Over 3 million tonnes of excavated material from the
tunnels was shipped to Wallasea Island in Essex to create a new 1,500 acre
RSPB nature reserve"[0]. It also required spending £1bn[1] buying up and
demolishing large areas of prime real estate in one of the most densely
populated and expensive places in Europe to create 10 brand new stations. Not
to mention that "100 archaeologists have found tens of thousands of items from
40 sites, spanning 55 million years"[2]. So the fact that it is more than 10%
of the cost of this for a short tunnel under open fields in a sparsely
populated area for relatively few people and providing no major new public
transport hubs is I think all the more surprising.

[0] [http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-
numbers](http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-numbers)

[1]
[https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_fi...](https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/Crossrail-2010.pdf)

[2] [https://archaeology.crossrail.co.uk/about-tunnel-the-
archaeo...](https://archaeology.crossrail.co.uk/about-tunnel-the-archaeology-
of-crossrail/)

