Welcome to the new Stonehenge: making a Neolithic circle fit for purpose

In 1993, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee described the setting and presentation of Stonehenge as ‘a national disgrace’. Two decades later, we finally have a remedy – a spanking new visitor centre to cater for travellers’ bodily needs and to prepare them for an encounter with the monument. What is more, the road that once severed Stonehenge from the Avenue has gone, restoring the link between the monument and its processional way. Chris Catling went there, gazed in awe, and wants to go back again very soon.

On the face of it, paying a large sum of money to stand in the open air (more often than not in the cold and wet) looking at a prehistoric monument is not an appealing proposition: there are plenty of visitor attractions that will give you a lot more for your money than a distant view of 70 ancient and artfully arranged stones in a Wiltshire field. It says something about the strange, numinous beauty of the cluster of stones that make up Stonehenge that a million paying visitors were not deterred last year from visiting the site, even in its ‘disgraceful’ condition, so strong is its appeal to the imagination.

Fast money and slow tourism

English Heritage must be hoping that many more will now flock once word gets out that there is much more to see and do at Stonehenge thanks to the opening on 18 December 2013 of a new visitor centre, with much improved café, shop, toilets, and exhibition centre. With a combined income from entrance charges and shop turnover in excess of £10 million, Stonehenge is the jewel in the crown of the English Heritage property portfolio, accounting for about 20% of its revenue. Once English Heritage becomes a self-funding charity in 2015, persuading more people to visit Stonehenge and encouraging them to spend more while they are there will be critical to the organisation’s sustainability.

above On the road to a ‘national disgrace’? This photograph shows the approach to Stonehenge along the A303 (with the A344 to the right) in about 1930. By the second half of the 20th century, almost all visitors arrived by road from the east. — On the road to a ‘national disgrace’? This photograph shows the approach to Stonehenge along the A303 (with the A344 to the right) in about 1930. By the second half of the 20th century, almost all visitors arrived by road from the east.

It is thus a bold move, albeit one that is fully justified in conservation terms, to build the visitor centre so far from the stones themselves. One wonders whether the coach tours that used to make brief stops will continue to do so, now that even a quick visit could easily take five times as long (see ‘Last Word’ on p.48). But quick visits are not what English Heritage has in mind: the investment of £27 million in the visitor centre and the closure of the A344 road running right past the monument is intended to give visitors an experience that takes them out of their 21st-century mindset. We already have the slow food movement (as a reaction to fast food): the Stonehenge Visitor Centre surely marks the birth of slow tourism, a place where you leave behind the car or the coach and living at 70 miles an hour for a more humane pace, or a pace perhaps that is dictated by the seasonal cycle of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Fast money and slow tourism

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