No other country’s top attraction is as poorly executed as Stonehenge

It’s a cold grey morning over Stonehenge, with a gentle breeze purring across the landscape. In the fields beyond, ancient barrows mark the final resting places of those who built this monument nearly 5,000 years ago. 

Train your eyes on the standing stones and you can almost imagine you’re back there, on that bleak and windy plain, gazing up in wonderment at those rocks when they were newly carved and carried from the western edge of Wales, some 200 miles away. The smell of the mud and grass is the same, the glint of the winter sun through the clouds is the same, the dull roar of lorries thundering along the A303 is the… well, hang on a minute. 

Standing at Stonehenge, it’s impossible to view the modern world as anything other than a distraction from an ancient wonder.

In Giza, modernity is held at a respectful distance from the pyramids; the Parthenon of Athens sits above the city on its rocky acropolis as on a pedestal. The modern Rome around the ancient Colosseum serves simply to chart the course of civilization.

But when it comes to Britain’s most famous ancient wonder? We’ve managed the worst of both worlds. Here, the past and the present offer each other nothing but inconvenience. 

For drivers on the A303, Stonehenge means traffic jams from dawn until dusk as gawkers slow down to view the site on the one-lane road, just as it bottlenecks. At peak times, the eight mile journey takes an hour.

For visitors hoping to experience some Neolithic wonder, the road is a loud, immersion-breaking eyesore that bisects the Stonehenge, Avebury and associated Unesco World Heritage sites, cutting off access to the Normanton Down barrows and other ancient elements key to understanding the mysteries of the site. Traffic accidents – and even deaths – have occurred as tourists have attempted to visit the rest of the ancient monument.

This has led to National Highways creating a plan to submerge the A303 below ground. Members of The Stonehenge Alliance campaign group have taken to the courts to object to the scheme, arguing that it could lead to the destruction of up to seven hectares of land, and even mean the site loses its Unesco status. The group was responsible for quashing previous government approval for the scheme in 2021.

Still, English Heritage has given its backing to the plan. “I think it will improve Stonehenge immensely,” said archaeologist Heather Sebire, the charity’s senior properties curator, who met me at the Stonehenge visitor centre on its tenth anniversary. “We can’t encourage people to explore the whole site if they’re risking their lives on the road. The noise is awful. There’s so much misinformation that gets people riled up. I’ve had people worrying that the road will go directly under the henge itself, which is nonsense.” 

The palaver encapsulates everything we get wrong about Stonehenge. We have the chance to improve an ancient site and choose not to for fear of getting it wrong. Let’s be honest, no other country’s top archeological attraction is as poorly executed as Stonehenge.

Now, before we start, it should be acknowledged that we have got a lot of things right about Stonehenge, too. The new visitor centre is 2.6 miles down the road with regular shuttle buses running to the henge itself. This means that Hengeheads can fill their boots with Neolithic goodness, without hearing the clink of tea cups from the café or a big boxy building spoiling the view.

Stonehenge is also accessible on a budget. A public bridleway runs right alongside the site, so if you can’t afford to pay the (frankly, extortionate) £23 per adult entrance fee to access the official walkway that rings the site, you can still see the main attraction for free, from just a few metres further away.

Still, we seem determined to squander these positives. 

Firstly, access. The closest railway station to Stonehenge is Salisbury, 9.6 miles away – but if you want to get from one to the other? Nothing. I’m reliably informed the 10 minute journey only costs £25 by taxi. You could save a bit of money by hopping on a private bus – that’ll be £18.50 per adult, please. It runs once an hour and you must book in advance. 

Even the pricey Warner Bros Studio Tour is beneficent enough to lay on a free shuttle from the nearby Watford train station for ticket-holders. That may partially explain why Harry Potter gets twice as many yearly visitors as one of the oldest archaeological attractions in existence.

Once you arrive at the visitor centre, there’s plenty to enjoy. The exhibition inside the visitor centre is decent. There are a handful of artefacts to see and a history of the monoliths to pore over. After a quick read, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Stonehenge was the first and only stone circle of its kind in the world. In fact, there are many in Scotland that are older and just as well-preserved. The Ring of Brodgar on Orkney and the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis, to name two.

Outdoors, there’s a quintet of Neolithic huts, which were empty when I visited them, where visitors can get a sense of how ancient Britons lived. 

Once you’ve hopped on the shuttle bus to see the stones? Well… you can see them. There’s no arguing that they don’t sit in a field, right in front of your eyes.

“I’m not as disappointed as I could have been,” one visitor quipped as she passed me. 

If they’ve had the misfortune to miss that day’s Stone Circle Experience visit, which happen in the early morning, visitors must settle for being kept at a distance of at least 10 metres (33ft) at all times, sometimes more. You have to slug it out for a spot close to the monoliths in which to take a selfie. Thank goodness I brought my binoculars.

I’m not suggesting a return to the last century, where visitors could walk right up and climb atop the stones and carve their initials into them (a fence was installed for this reason in 1977). That way madness lies, as the Colosseum discovered to its detriment earlier this year. But there’s a balance to be found: with better security and supervision, perhaps we could be allowed within a metre or two of the great monoliths.

After looping the official walkway – a muddy track around the henge itself (and it is very muddy, remember your boots) – there’s more to do. You could walk up to Woodhenge or the Durrington Walls where the builders of Stonehenge lived. If you can find your way, that is: I couldn’t spot a signpost.

So it was back to the visitor centre to check out the shop. I could be snotty about the tat on sale, but to be fair, what heritage attraction doesn’t have tat? I was pleasantly surprised by a few tasteful selections, including a neat building game based on the henge itself. 

Then home, via the A303 for one last look. It only added an extra 50 minutes to my journey.

For all my griping, Stonehenge is wonderful. It’s a fascinating relic from a genuinely ancient civilisation, steeped in myth and magic, full of mystery. We should be proud of having it, but it’s about time we learned that to celebrate the ancient world properly, we can’t just leave it to stand there looking impressive. The work began 10 years ago with the new visitor centre – now it’s about time we started capitalising on it.