UK campaigners ask court to stop tunnel past Stonehenge site
Campaigners gather outside the UK's High Court as a legal challenge gets underway attempting to block a government-backed plan to build a road tunnel through the landscape surrounding Stonehenge. The proposed four lane dual-carriageway would replace the existing two lane road which frequently becomes blocked with traffic travelling between London and southwest England where it passes the ancient standing stones. The campaigners are seeking a judicial review, having won a previous legal battle to stop the project. Author and popular historian Tom Holland, attending the protest, says the proposed tunnel would "desecrate... the most significant prehistoric landscape in Britain, maybe in the whole of Europe." Rollo Maughfling, who calls himself the "Arch-Druid of Stonehenge", says it would be "a terrible disturbance... worse than it's ever been in all of these 5,000 years."
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00:00 [Chanting]
00:08 Stonehenge stands in the midst of the most significant prehistoric landscape in Britain,
00:13 maybe in the whole of Europe, and the tunnel is too short. It will desecrate that landscape.
00:19 [Chanting]
00:43 We came today because it's really important. It's over 11,000 years of history in this site
00:49 and just for the sake of a few people saving journey times in the present,
00:54 we're just destroying what's important for the future, for something that's really sacred,
01:00 for something that's really historically and archaeologically important.
01:04 Mine is only bright.
01:12 Stonehenge is an icon for Britain, but it is also an icon for the world.
01:18 And if that landscape is devastated, then we lose the chance to explain the beginnings of so much in this country.
01:26 [Chanting]
01:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]