The writer is a former editor of the FT’s House & Home
Henry Moore first visited Stonehenge in 1921 while studying sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London, and four years after he was injured in a gas attack fighting in the first world war. He arrived at Salisbury late, and had barely checked into his guest house before heading out on to the plain.
It must have been a deeply profound experience. Stonehenge in moonlight evokes the depth, distances and relationship between form and landscape that would preoccupy Moore’s art for the rest of his life. He was still processing it four decades later. “The Arch”, a six-metre high henge-like sculpture completed in 1969, greets visitors to Henry Moore: Sharing Form, a new exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Somerset, 30 miles away in south-west England.
Pilgrims have always been drawn to Stonehenge. It is a perpetual puzzle: the earliest stones were dragged there 5,000 years ago, though why still eludes us. It was a burial site, but archeologists and historians deliberate on its other purposes over millennia: worship, ceremonies, the marking of time.
Last week, custodians English Heritage attempted at least two of these by turning Stonehenge into a patriotic billboard. Images of the Queen were beamed on to the monument to mark her 70-year reign. Vladimir Solovyov, Vladimir Putin’s loudmouth propagandist, was clearly watching, and urged Russia to invade the UK and take Stonehenge in revenge for British support for Ukraine.
More immediate disruption comes from National Highways, the government agency in charge of roads. Its plan for a Stonehenge tunnel, estimated to cost around £1.7bn, would mean boring directly beneath the stones and the wider archeological site.
It is true that the A303, which cuts through the site, is traffic-choked and ruins the peace. The tunnel’s supporters, including English Heritage and the National Trust, part owner of the site, say it is the best way to unlock congestion and preserve the area. But planning inspectors, archeologists and Unesco disagree. Last year, in a case brought by campaigners, the High Court ruled transport secretary Grant Shapps acted “irrationally and unlawfully” in approving the project. The plans are now back with Shapps, who will decide the next move. In May, National Highways named its preferred contractors for the tunnel in what campaigners see as an attempt to pre-empt a decision.
Tom Holland, historian, author and anti-tunnel campaigner, anticipates the risks to the rich archaeological remains that litter this landscape, and could unlock Stonehenge’s secrets. “We’ll lose it and we won’t know what we’ve lost,” he says. “The A303 is annoying,” he concedes. “But ultimately, it’s only a road and it can eventually be got rid of. The tunnel will be the legacy of our generation to people in 3,000 years’ time . . . It seems shameful that we would even contemplate it.”
Unesco has warned Stonehenge risks losing world heritage status if the tunnel goes ahead.
There is no chance of a Moore-style nocturnal pilgrimage today. Stonehenge can only be seen up-close via a pricey visitor centre. The stones were roped off in 1977 to stop people climbing up and taking lumps away. None of that deters Stonehenge-experience seekers. More than 1.5mn visitors paid to stand behind its barrier pre-Covid, in 2019.
By coincidence, another Stonehenge exhibition is running at the British Museum. The World of Stonehenge ends with a quote from Jacquetta Hawkes, an archeologist, written in 1967 just as Moore was working on his Arch: “Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves — or desires.”
Everyone wants a piece of Stonehenge. The legacy of our post-Jubilee age could be the permanent loss of its buried secrets.
