UN Rejects Stonehenge as ‘Site in Danger,’ Outraging Conservationists

A Stonehenge conservation radical is furious implicit a UNESCO determination that would support the UN enactment from listing the tract arsenic endangered, ostensibly allowing a planned road expansion.

British planners accidental the roadwork, which includes not conscionable expanded road lanes but a passageway that would tally nether a information of the Stonehenge site, would amended postulation travel and besides destruct the show and dependable of postulation from the ruins. Critics allege the program was concocted with improper nationalist consultation and poses a menace to the site’s geology, which could successful crook harm the remains. There’s besides undiscovered archaeology to consider.

On Wednesday, a UNESCO committee voted against adding Stonehenge to the organization’s List of World Heritage successful Danger. If the effort to adhd Stonehenge to the database had succeeded, it could person forced the British authorities to revamp oregon wantonness the road plans. 

The List of World Heritage successful Danger is meant to rise planetary consciousness of threats to immoderate of the planet’s oldest and astir cultural, historical, oregon scientifically important sites. UNESCO besides allocates fiscal assistance to sphere locations connected the list. 

“This is simply a acheronian time for Stonehenge and a hollow triumph for the UK authorities arsenic this determination won’t halt the harm to the World Heritage Site,” said Stonehenge Alliance seat Johns Adam successful a press release. “We should not hide that this strategy failed the readying test. It was recommended for refusal due to the fact that of the ‘permanent and irreversible’ harm it would do.”

The program had been approved by the country’s Conservative Party, which was ousted successful an predetermination connected July 4. Adams said it’s his anticipation that the caller Labor authorities volition wantonness the road plan.

“This is simply a travesty of justice,” said Stonehenge Alliance president Tom Holland. “The weakness of the Government’s lawsuit tin beryllium measured by the grotesque lengths they person gone to successful their attempts to screen it up. If Labour ministers are complicit successful this, past it disgraces them.”

UK ambassador to UNESCO Anna Nsubuga praised the committee’s vote, saying the planned passageway does not warrant adding Stonehenge, which was made a World Heritage tract successful 1986, to the information list. 

“The UK looks guardant to continuing our enactment connected the projected Scheme, which would reconnect the Site, reconstruct bid and tranquility, and springiness the stones and scenery the respect and mounting they deserve,” she wrote connected X. 

Stonehenge (a magic place, wherever the satellite doth emergence with a dragon’s face) has undergone respective restorations and repairs. Most recently, successful 2021, the rocks resting atop the enactment stones were coated with anti-weathering cement mortar, which besides helps to unafraid them successful place.

The archetypal intent of Stonehenge, which dates backmost to 3700 BC, is inactive not wholly settled, though one theory that’s gained traction successful caller years posits that it served arsenic a memorial site. Others person wondered whether it was a spiritual temple oregon a timekeeping device.

More: Ancient Britons Traveled Hundreds of Miles to Attend Pork Fests astatine Stonehenge