Stonehenge

Q. A 'national disgrace'

A. In 1986, Stonehenge and some 1,600 acres of its surrounding landscape containing an extraordinary number of interrelated archaeological sites, including barrow cemeteries, earthworks and ancient settlement, was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, thus putting it on a par with structures such as the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Egypt.

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However, the facilities at Stonehenge were declared a 'public disgrace' by the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee in 1993. Tightly squeezed between the busy A344 and the even busier A303, Stonehenge is both damaged and degraded by noise and visual pollution these roads create. People from all over the world to Britain's busiest archaeological monument - over 1 million visitors a year - but find their enjoyment compromised by the traffic and the poor facilities offered by the visitors' centre with its large and ugly car park. They are cut off from the monument by fences and cannot touch the stones.

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Q. So what's the solution

A. After years of dithering by successive governments, the then Culture Secretary Chris Smith unveiled proposals in 1998 which would mean the closure of the A344 alongside the stones, burial of the A303 in a cut-and-cover tunnel, removal of the nearby car park and visitor facilities and the creation of a new visitor centre away from the site. Shuttle buses would carry visitors free of charge along existing roads to a point about half a mile from the stones and the final approach would be on foot.

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Q. And is everyone agreed on this

A. No. There is a feeling among some commentators, particularly in the archaeological fraternity, that the cut-and-cover tunnel solution is being railroaded through as the cheapest option. Transport, environment and archaeology groups say that it would potentially cause irreparable damage to a large number of archaeological sites, but the estimated �300 million cost of boring a tunnel - which would leave these sites unaffected - is deemed to high. The Council for the Protection of Rural England said that it felt it would be scandalous to carve a huge trench through one of the best known and most important archaeological landscapes in the world.

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Q. Just how old is the monument and what was it used for

A. The first stage of the monument dates from c. 3100 BC, and later phases of building took place between 2100 BC and 1500 BC. The Stonehenge that visitors see today is considerably ruined, many of its stones having been pilfered by medieval builders. It has also been subjected to centuries of weathering and depredation, so it takes some imagination to get an idea of the extraordinarily sophisticated structure as it would have appeared 2,500 years ago.

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It was given to the nation by Sir Cecil Chubb in 1918 and is now managed by English Heritage. A further 1,400 acres surrounding the small triangle of land on which the henge stands were purchased by public appeal in the 1920s so that the setting of the monument might be protected by the National Trust and be safe from building or industrial development and agriculture.

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The modern understanding of the monument is based chiefly on excavations carried out since 1919, but no-one really knows why Stonehenge was built. Most are, however, agreed that it was probably constructed as a place of worship. Early in the 20th century the English astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer demonstrated that the north-east axis aligned with the sunrise at the summer solstice, leading other scholars to speculate that the builders were sun worshipers. In 1963 an American astronomer, Gerald Hawkins, purported that Stonehenge was a complicated computer for predicting lunar and solar eclipses.

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Q. What is a henge

A. Originally used only in reference to Stonehenge, the term is now applied to other mysterious sites featuring circular structures, such as Woodhenge a couple of miles east of Stonehenge near Amesbury in Wiltshire, and the recently discovered 'Seahenge', a circle of wooden piles under the sand of the north Norfolk coast.

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Q. And Thomas Hardy

A. Stonehenge is in Hardy's Wessex, and it featured in his writings. The 19th-century belief that the site was a place of pagan worship is evident in Hardy's setting Tess d'Urberville's 'sacrifice' to Fate on the so-called Slaughter Stone at Stonehenge.

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Q. What about the druids

A. The modern association with the druids dates back to the late 19th century and really took off with the upsurge in interest in things spiritual in the early 20th. The ancient druids were an educated class in Celtic societies, who acted as priests, teachers and judges. However, the stones pre-date the Celtic settlement of Britain, so the druids were not responsible for their erection.

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Today the druids celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge. After 15 years of police-enforced exclusion from the stones after pitched battles between police and Travellers in the mid-1980s, the druids - and others - were finally allowed back into the circle in 2000. This has led to a stand-off between druids and other celebrants, with many druids believing that there is no point trying to celebrate when you're surrounded by several thousand blissed-out 'revellers'.

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Q. 'Revellers'

A. A word used by one of the disaffected druids to describe those loved-up - but non-religious - types who turn up to welcome the mid-summer sun.

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Time was that the annual Stonehenge Free Festival occupied a few fields on the other side of the road from the stones for a few weeks every summer. A genuinely alternative festival - unlike the rather more commercial Glastonbury - hippies, punks, Hell's Angels, Travellers and anyone else who cared to turn up all hung out with - relative - mutual tolerance in a haze of chemicals of many varieties. It was the attempts to halt this annual gathering that led to the disturbances in 1985, leading the police to exclude everyone from Stonehenge around solstice-time.

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By Simon Smith