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21 January 2014

New Stonehenge Visitor Centre Open For Business

The new £27m Stonehenge Visitor Centre opened its doors on the 18th December 2013. The project had been over 20 years in the making.

Penny Anderson Associates Ltd was commissioned by The National Trust back in 2008 to ensure that English Heritage’s plans for this new facility and its supporting infrastructure were in keeping with the ecological interests of the natural landscape surrounding the ancient monument.

Considerations were important chalk grassland and the unique wildlife they supported, including ground nesting birds, reptiles and rare invertebrates.

Stonehenge (cc) littlekeithy

Penny and Senior Ecologist Dr Phil Smith undertook an appraisal of six prospective locations to determine which represented the most environmentally sensitive location on which to site both the new visitor centre, and a new rapid transport system. It was decided to locate the new visitor centre, which will cater for up to 6000 visitors a day, at Airman’s Corner 1.5 miles to the west of the stone circle. Works began on its construction in September 2012.

Part of the A344 that runs closest to the stone circle has now been closed to traffic and returned to grassland; the remaining section provides the shuttle route for the land train that will ferry the anticipated one million annual visitors between the visitor centre and the stone circle. Eventually the old visitor centre will also be demolished and returned to grassland, thus returning more of the landscape to the tranquility of the chalk downland in which it was originally set.

For more details visit the English Heritage or National Trust Stonehenge websites.

If you would like more information on the work carried out by PAA at Stonehenge, feel free to contact us, or see below for leaflets detailing some of the services offered by PAA relevant to this project.