The Stonehenge Byways and the Threat to their Existence

There are a number of Public Rights of Way (PRoW) that run through the Stonehenge World Heritage site.

You can find them marked on the Ordnance Survey map (Explorer sheet 130 "Salisbury and Stonehenge"), on the Wiltshire Council's Rights of Way Explorer GIS (try searching for AMES12) and see how their routes have remained mostly stable over the last 200 years using the National Library of Scotland old map archive.

Here's the closeup from Wiltshire Council's website.

PRoW include footpaths, bridleways and byways open to all traffic ("BOATs") and afford the public the right to travel along them freely. England and Wales's PRoW network was codified in 1949 in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, where ancient tracks and paths were formally set down in Definite Maps and Statements that described their routes and enshrined them in Law.

If a PRoW is a footpath you can only walk along it, for a bridleway you can walk, cycle or ride a horse. For BOATs you can do all of that, and you can use a motorised vehicle along them as well.

It's the local Council's responsibility to maintain these PRoW in a fit state to be used as intended, and it's an offence to block them up to prevent the public using them (something certain landowners will sometimes do, illegally).

The BOAT that runs past Stonehenge comprises a collection of routes known as (from South to North) Berwick St James 11, Wilsford-cum-Lake 1, Amesbury 12 (these three are the long dotted green and brown line in the map above) and Durrington 10 (the solid brown line continuation at the northern end). For the purpose of this post, this is called "the Drove".

The shorter dotted green and brown line that stops at the A303 comprises (from South to North) Wilsford-cum-Lake 2 and Amesbury 11.

For generations, people have made use of the Drove to get to the vicinity of Stonehenge, stop, and walk up to (and originally into, before it was fenced off) the monument and out into the wider landscape.

Ever since the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre was built about 10 years ago, when the old main road that used to also run right past Stonehenge (the A344) was closed and grassed over, the Drove has been the only way that people in motorised vehicles have been able to approach the area "out of hours".

So if you want to see Stonehenge at dawn, for example, you can drive down the Drove and park on the side of it near where the old Visitor Centre used to be, get out of your vehicle and walk along the "Permissive Path" (not a PRoW, but an informal public path along the route of the old A344) to get quite close to Stonehenge. For free. Whenever you like.

So Far So Good, but...

It came to light recently, quite by accident, that Wiltshire Council have invited a select group of "user groups and interested parties" to offer their comments on "measures they feel would be appropriate and proportionate to address the problems being experienced."

I quote the communication that was sent out by the Council in full, below:

I am writing to you in relation to the Byways Open to All Traffic contained within the vicinity of Stonehenge. For some time, the current level and type of use of these Byways Open to All Traffic has resulted in a number of issues around damage to the surface of the Byways Open to All Traffic and degradation of the environment within the World Heritage Site (WHS). While it was thought that the promotion of the Stonehenge Tunnel Scheme would have addressed a number of these issues, its cancellation means that this opportunity has now disappeared.

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites World Heritage Site Management Plan (2015) sets out some specific objectives in relation to highways and public rights of way:

· Policy 6a of the Management Plan states the need to identify and implement measures to reduce the negative impacts of roads, traffic and parking on the WHS and to improve road safety and the ease and confidence with which residents and visitors can explore the WHS.

· Policy 6b states the aim to manage vehicular access to byways within the WHS to avoid damage to archaeology, improve safety and encourage exploration of the landscape on foot whilst maintaining access for emergency, operational and farm vehicles and landowners.

Most recent inspection of the Byways Open to All Traffic, carried out in conjunction with the “Winter Solstice” closures, identified the fact that the byway surface conditions had deteriorated to an unacceptable condition. This has necessitated the closures being extended to enable repair works to be undertaken.

Wiltshire Council as the Highway Authority is now seeking to develop a holistic approach that addresses Policy 6a and 6b of the Management Plan. To this end we are now looking to consult with user groups and interested parties for their views on what measures they feel would be appropriate and proportionate to address the problems being experienced.

We would be grateful if you could make any observations and respond to this correspondence by 21st March 2025 (UPDATE: now extended to 31st March - SB).

Responses can be returned to:

stonehengebyways@wiltshire.gov.uk

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

On the face of it, this might seem reasonable.

However, the Council has a history of trying to remove vehicular rights over these routes. The last time they tried to do so (before the Stonehenge Tunnel project attempt) was in 2010/11 when the Order to "Stop Up" the old A344 was subject to an Enquiry by an Inspector to determine whether or not it would be allowed. The Council had included in their application an attempt to remove the BOAT status from the byways around Stonehenge at the same time.

The Inspector denied that attempt and Wiltshire Council were frustrated.

This new invitation to offer observations on "a holistic approach" (whatever that is) seems to have behind it another attempt to remove the rights of motorised vehicles to use these routes.

If you should happen to think that this is wrong, and that there ought to be a way for people to readily access the Stonehenge area by motorised vehicle without relying on the Visitor Centre being open and using the shuttle bus (which means having to buy a ticket - currently £86 for a family of 5), then you have until Friday 21st March 2025 (UPDATE: Now extended to 31st March - SB) to let the Council know by emailing stonehengebyways@wiltshire.gov.uk

I've done so, and you can read my response here. It's quite detailed and digs into the World Heritage Site Management Plan 2015 to find out what Policies 6a and 6b actually say, and also checks out what the last Condition Survey Report from 2012 had to say about damage to archaeology as a result of vehicles on the byways. It turns out there's more to this that what Wiltshire Council have said in their communication.

There is no consultation page on the Wiltshire Council website about this, and a vast number of people and organisations who could rightly be called "user groups and interested parties" were not included in the list of recipients of Wiltshire Council's invitation.

It's almost as if they're trying to keep it secret, but let's not go down that route.

A Change.org petition has been set up (not by me), which you can sign, but even if you do that it's vital that you also directly email Wiltshire Council (stonehengebyways@wiltshire.gov.uk) to give your view.

The Larkhill Sun Gap Revisited

The Summer Solstice Sunrise line as seen from Stonehenge runs across the landscape and over the ridgeline at Larkhill, at the northern end of Wood Road and Tombs Road.

Back in 2014, the MoD were proposing to build a large number of houses as part of their Army Rebasing Program, to provide accommodation for troops who were being returned to the UK from Germany.

Two of the potential sites under consideration were in Larkhill, and would have been built across the alignment to the Summer Solstice Sunrise in a spot called the "Sun Gap".

I objected strongly to this idea, blogged about the issue and a petition (not organised by me) was submitted to the formal consultation which contained almost 2000 signatures from around the world. Happily, the offending candidate sites were dropped from the program.

If you're interested, I've republished my blog posts from 2014 here as the original blog is no longer available.

Sun Gap?

In the early 20th Century, just as aviation was taking off (ha ha!), a number of aeroplane "flying sheds" were constructed on this ridgeline in Larkhill so early aviators could store and work on their machines before testing them on the Larkhill Flying Ground.

Initially just one shed was built (for Horatio Barber), which was followed by two others - one for the War Office, which lay unused for many months before being used by Captain Fulton, and the third for George Cockburn. For simplicity, I'll refer to these as the "northern sheds".

Then the War Office became properly interested and decided they wanted a series of them for their own use.

The problem was that the location they chose for them would have blocked the view of the rising Summer Solstice Sun from Stonehenge. The Larkhill ridge was completely bare of trees then, offering an unobstructed view from the stones.

Sir Edmund Antrobus (artistocratic owner of Stonehenge at the time) evidently carried some clout and the War Office were prevailed upon to leave a wide space between the existing northern sheds and their new ones.

This space is what became known as the "Larkhill Sun Gap".

The history of these sheds has been researched and documented in the excellent book by Terry Grace "Stonehenge, Sheds and Sun-Gaps".

I recently came across this book in Amesbury Library and was interested to find that Terry had included one of my diagrams of the solstice sunrise line from my 2014 Army Rebasing consultation response in the chapter where he dealt with the Sun Gap.

There had been some confusion about where exactly the Sun Gap was - some researchers favouring a more southerly location where a different gap existed between sets of sheds. Terry felt that my diagram indicated the northerly larger gap was more likely.

When I was assembling my argument against the plan to build houses on Larkhill, I used some rough and ready methods to determine the direction of the sunrise line along with a diagram of the flying sheds' locations that I'd come across online (in a PDF of "Cross & Cockade International Winter 2012 GFS-89" - now only available as a purchaseable download via https://greatwaraviation.org/shop/back-issues/volume-43-number-4/)

What I found in Terry's book was a much better diagram of the sheds which he'd overlaid on Google Earth.

I thought it'd be useful to redo my solstice sunrise line determination in conjunction with Terry's diagram and see how close my original rough and ready attempt might have been.

Scratching an Itch

These days I use Stellarium with a digital terrain model landscape for the Stonehenge area installed to produce a horizon that isn't simply a 0° altitude line in all directions. It also has the advantage of a good atmospheric refraction model, plus the ArchaeoLines plug-in works well for showing the ancient positions and paths of the Sun and Moon.

First step was to overlay Terry's plan of the sheds' layout in Google Earth. Here's the original from his book:

Flying Sheds' layout from Stonehenge, Sheds and Sun-Gaps

And here's the result when that's placed as an overlay in Google Earth:

Flying Sheds' layout overlaid in Google Earth

The second step was to determine the azimuths of "first gleam" and "full orb" over the DTM (actual) horizon in the direction of Larkhill, for Summer Solstice Sunrise in 1910 which was the era when the sheds were being constructed. Doing it for 2025 wouldn't have affected things appreciably, but I thought 1910 would be appropriate.

Screenshots from Stellarium follow:

First Gleam over Larkhill in 1910

Full Orb over Larkhill in 1910

I've simply eyeballed the Sun and judged where the first gleam has just appeared, and full orb when the horizon is tangent to the bottom of the Sun's disc. This is accurate enough for my purpose.

Reading off the azimuths, we get First Gleam at 50° 22’ 47.5” (50.379861°) and Full Orb at 51° 15’ 30.1” (51.258361°).

Step 3 is to generate Google Earth linestrings to show these azimuths. I need to anchor one end of each at the centre of Stonehenge on the solstice axis and the other ends about 3 miles distant at whatever coordinates each azimuth achieves at that distance. (Aside: it's quite annoying that Google Earth doesn't have a built-in facility for creating a line from a point on a specific bearing).

Handily, there's a useful online calculator that'll give me the end points based on start point, bearing and distance. It uses the Great Circle method, but for a distance as short as 3 miles this isn't going to cause a problem.

Using starting coordinates for the centre of Stonehenge of 51.178855° N; 1.826209° W (found by me using a consumer level GPS years ago, so it could be up to 10 yards out, but this won't make any appreciable difference at the accuracy I'm using for this), the end point coordinates come out at:

First Gleam: 51.206535° N; 1.772819° W
Full Orb: 51.206019° N; 1.772148° W

There is a ludicrous amount of "precision" in all these numbers, which isn't really precision at all it's just lots of digits after the decimal point. I don't care about rounding these down because it'll not make any significant difference to the gross accuracy of the end result.

Final step is to create a .KML file containing the linestrings, load it up in Google Earth and see what we get.

First the wide view with Stonehenge in the bottom left and Larkhill sheds in the top right (I've added placemarks to indicate which yellow azimuth line is which):

Wide view of Azimuths and Sheds in Google Earth

And here's the closeup - the moment of truth, as it were:

Closeup of Azimuth lines and Sheds

I think it's conclusive - the Sun Gap was in the space between the original three northern sheds and the later War Office set.

The Sun Gap that was created over 100 years ago is fantastically symmetrical either side of First Gleam (upper line) and Full Orb (lower line) so "Half Orb" would have been dead centre of the space. Nicely surveyed indeed.

Comparing side by side with my original work from 2014, I wasn't too far out with the rough and ready approach, which is pleasing.

Side by side comparison of 2014 (L) vs 2025 (R) work

Now all that remains is to get those blasted trees removed from between Wood Road and Tombs Road, as well as some alongside Fargo Road near Strangways and a short stretch just north of the east end of the Cursus to restore the original Sun Gap clear sightline.

That's a project for another day.