SAVE STONEHENGE WORLD HERITAGE SITE

SAVE STONEHENGE WORLD HERITAGE SITE

Started
18 December 2014
Petition to
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRANSPORT AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CULTURE, MEDIA & SPORT (UK GOVERNMENT)
Signatures: 90,613Next Goal: 150,000
58 people signed this week

Why this petition matters

Started by Stonehenge Alliance

PETITION: No further damage should be done to the archaeological landscape of Stonehenge.

Future generations would be appalled at those who decided that road widening should be at the expense of England’s most iconic World Heritage Site.

If A303 widening at Stonehenge is felt to be essential it should be done by means of a deep bored tunnel at least 4.5km long. Anything shorter would cause irreparable damage to this landscape, in breach of the World Heritage Convention.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

The UK Government proposes to widen the A303 trunk road to the south west. This road crosses the iconic Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS), which has been called “the most archaeologically significant land surface in Europe”. The whole site, extending to beyond the horizons around the famous stones themselves, is c. 5.4 km across. All of it makes up a “huge ancient complex” that holds many secrets yet to be discovered.

The proposal is to put the road into a tunnel where it passes the stones, but the tunnel would be at most only 2.9 km long. This would result in at least 1.6 km of above-ground 21st-century road engineering within the WHS, consisting of new dual carriageway descending in massive trenches to the tunnel portals and possibly a new underpass with slip roads on the western WHS boundary.

Archaeology in the construction zones would be destroyed and the A303 would become the largest ever human intervention in an area fashioned and revered by over a hundred generations of our ancestors.

The whole Stonehenge landscape has an outstanding universal value that is of immense significance for all people for all time, and this transcends any consideration of sorting out a 21st century part-time traffic jam.

RUNNING TOTAL OF SIGNATURES This is a world wide petition linked to an identical one at 38 degrees for UK addresses only.  The running total for both petitions is here.

PETITION IN OTHER LANGUAGES Chinese; Dutch; French; German; Italian; Portuguese; Slovenian; Spanish.

HARD COPIES OF PETITION You can download hard copies of the petition and collect signatures here. 

58 people signed this week
Signatures: 90,613Next Goal: 150,000
58 people signed this week
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Decision-Makers

  • SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRANSPORT AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CULTURE, MEDIA & SPORTUK GOVERNMENT