Public access to historic sites is one of those thorny issues where general principle and actual good practice conflict. In principle, the more that people have access to places and experiences previously denied them the better. Access, however, like freedom, is not a right that can be enjoyed without constraints. All too often, my access is your outrage, and vice versa.
At Stonehenge, plans discussed last month for increasing public access are likely to make many people very outraged indeed. For some time, English Heritage and the National Trust have wanted to clear the Stonehenge landscape of `20th century clutter' such as roads, fences, carparks and gift shops, and create an archaeological park where the public had the right to roam freely. A new visitor centre was to be built outside the World Heritage Site and a sort of train was to take visitors to a viewpoint about 1km from the stones. From there, to gain greater access, visitors would have had to walk.
This imaginative plan, however, has fallen foul of political correctness and commercial thinking. To fund it, more particularly the quite unnecessarily elaborate visitor centre (aka retail mall) millions of pounds are required from the Millennium Commission and - following Government policy - from the private sector as well (in this case the Tussaud's Group). A precondition of funding is easy mass access, and the need for a commercial return on capital.
The proposal now is to lay a track for a mass-transit system all the way from the visitor centre to the present carpark 300m from the stones, with several halts en route. A fleet of trains would thus dump up to a million people a year at one point in the landscape with all the consequences that entails of crowding, clutter and environmental damage.
Amazingly, English Heritage has accepted this misguided proposal, and the National Trust appears to be inclined to agree. They regard the proposal as the best way of satisfying the demands for easy public access, and thereby of acquiring the funds. Yet the scheme will lead not only to the inappropriate visual intrusion of new 20th century constructions and machinery in the landscape, but also undoubtedly to greater commercial exploitation of Stonehenge in the future, and to further degradation of the spirit of the place.
It is painful to have to say that, for conservation reasons, in some circumstances people can't always expect the easiest option. I believe, however, that in fact people increasingly understand that. Who knows, maybe in a few years' time, visitors might appreciate the chance to experience Stonehenge without ugly modern distractions - as in English Heritage's and the National Trust's original vision.
Thankfully my local paper in Newcastle is clear on the principle to be followed here in the North East:
'The problem of over-use by cars and people on Holy Island is typical of the situation found at tourism 'honeypots', which are coping with similar environmental depredation. Control is the solution - people will have to accept that their freedom to drive and wander at will has to be curtailed. 'I like that. It is encouraging that such a source advocates communal discipline and selfdenial so that 'attractions will still be available for future generations. ' Thank goodness archaeology - Stonehenge excepted - arrived at that conclusion 25 years ago.
Recently I publicly criticised the proposed National Trail along Hadrian's Wall - which last month received its Lottery grant - and I was branded 'elitist' because in this case I ranked historical significance and scientific potential before people-pleasure and recreational consumption. I still do: the Wall - ironically a structure originally built to deny and control access - is a World Heritage Site, not a World Walking Site. Of course people should have access to it, physically, visually, aesthetically, intellectually; but there is no need to jeopardise its very being by making it as easy of access as Marks and Sparks on Oxford Street.
Hadrian's Wall and its landscape already are accessible to those who deserve to be there. How about that as an elitist assertion? - but it needs to be said, for others' agenda is heritagism not conservation, 'the end of responsibility' in Richard Morris's phrase (see BA, February) rather than sustainable long-termism. The 20,000 walkers expected to trek end to end a decade hence, plus more day-walkers than at present, will exact the price of non-elitist access - significant environmental and mural degradation. Moral degradation too, for in the often money-driven pursuit of encouraging greater public access, we will have ceased being able to distinguish right from wrong. If access rules everything, all will very definitely not be OK.
Prof Peter Fowler is a Leverhulme Fellow at Newcastle University and a former President of the CBA. He is also a Council Member of the National Trust.
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