I understand. That's very sad.

Would it be true to say that if EH say definitively that an area is nationally important then that makes permission well nigh impossible, so for your fears to be realised then their statement,

"we have no hesitation in asserting that these deposits are of national importance, dating from the Neolithic period and related to the adjacent monument complex and its wider landscape"

... would need to be qualified, to make it crystal clear that they actually only meant PART of the land?

If so, their new statement would look pretty much like a retreat under pressure since if they meant part they had every opportunity to say so in their current statement.

Words are wretched things aren't they. If they'd only changed one, and said this "area" instead of these "deposits" are of national importance, dating from the Neolithic period and related to the adjacent monument complex and its wider landscape" there would be no scope for cutting the area up.

I suppose there are bits of the Stonehenge landscape that are entirely devoid of nationally important deposits yet who could conceive of excluding those from the whole and entertaining digging holes and creating lakes in them? Perhaps the parallel with Stonehenge may yet prove the best hope and Tarmac's use of "the same methodology and scoring system applied to finds at Stonehenge" may yet come back to bite them. I do hope so.