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Stonehenge and its Environs

​…Road Finally Closed​….

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Mustard M
Mustard Oct 8, 2013 17:26:53
Replying to Sanctuary

Sanctuary wrote:
Mustard wrote:
Sanctuary wrote:
Are EH as keen to see the back of the road through Avebury as they are at SH? If not, why not? The A303 is nowhere near as evasive as the road passing straight through the middle of a stone circle of WHS status!
Bit different though, isn't it? Even if you dug a tunnel under Avebury, there's still a living community that would need vehicular access, so the road couldn't be removed. Best you could do would be to significantly reduce traffic.
I was thinking bye-pass and leaving the road down to the church and past the Red Lion the other way to Swindon open and cutting the road through the middle of the circle off. Along those lines anyway.
But you'd still have a road through the village, and a bunch of (legitimately) pissed off residents. Preferable from a conservation point of view maybe, but nowhere near the (relatively) simple solution that's available at Stonehenge. So it's kinda easy to see why it isn't up there on the EH priority list, nice though it would be from a TMA perspective.

S Sanctuary
Sanctuary Oct 8, 2013 17:41:22
Replying to Mustard

Mustard wrote:
Sanctuary wrote:
Mustard wrote:
Sanctuary wrote:
Are EH as keen to see the back of the road through Avebury as they are at SH? If not, why not? The A303 is nowhere near as evasive as the road passing straight through the middle of a stone circle of WHS status!
Bit different though, isn't it? Even if you dug a tunnel under Avebury, there's still a living community that would need vehicular access, so the road couldn't be removed. Best you could do would be to significantly reduce traffic.
I was thinking bye-pass and leaving the road down to the church and past the Red Lion the other way to Swindon open and cutting the road through the middle of the circle off. Along those lines anyway.
But you'd still have a road through the village, and a bunch of (legitimately) pissed off residents. Preferable from a conservation point of view maybe, but nowhere near the (relatively) simple solution that's available at Stonehenge. So it's kinda easy to see why it isn't up there on the EH priority list, nice though it would be from a TMA perspective.
Well you'd always have to keep the road through the village open but restrict it to local and service traffic only. Visitor volume would remain the same so business would not suffer. The road through the middle of the circle could be returned to nature then.

L Littlestone
Littlestone Oct 8, 2013 18:34:03
Replying to Mustard

Mustard wrote:
But you'd still have a road through the village, and a bunch of (legitimately) pissed off residents. Preferable from a conservation point of view maybe, but nowhere near the (relatively) simple solution that's available at Stonehenge. So it's kinda easy to see why it isn't up there on the EH priority list, nice though it would be from a TMA perspective.
The idea of a bypass for Avebury has been considered but it’d be even trickier there (from what I can remember) than at Stonehenge (and that’s even before the howls of protest from the, “It’ll destroy the environment.” and, It’ll wreck the archaeological record.” brigade). So, as you say, ‘nice though it would be from a TMA perspective’ it ain’t going to happen – principally because we’re a very small voice amid a much larger cacophony of other voices unwilling, or unable, to do anything. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t keep on saying what should be done, even though we’re often accused of ‘banging on’ about these issues...