g a policeman constantly present. However,
the Antrobus family showed little enthusiasm for these proposals. One
of the sarsen stones had fallen in 1797, while another came down in 1900,
and it was this which finally caused the site to be enclosed (Chippindale
Throughout the Victorian period Stonehenge was a popular
location for picnics, and gatherings at public holidays. From the 1890s
onward, with the recognition of the astronomical significance of the site,
up to 3000 people would gather at midsummer morning each year to watch
the sun rise over the Heelstone. However, with the recognition that the
stones might be unstable Stonehenge was fenced, a policeman was installed,
and a 1 shilling entrance fee was charged. At this time a number of groups
opposed the enclosure, and one of them, interestingly enough, was the
National Trust. In the early 20th century, the Antrobus family attempted
to sell Stonehenge to the British government, under the threat that they
would sell it off to America. This met with no success. In 1915 the Antrobuses
finally sold the whole of the Amesbury estate to Cecil Chubb, who in 1918
gave Stonehenge to the nation (Chippindale 1983: 174). During the short
period that he owned the site, Chubb granted the Order of Druids the right
to hold ceremonies there at the solstice (Sebastian 1990). Given that
the site was still relatively unsafe, six of the stones were immediately
righted and concreted by the Office of Works, and the suggestion was made
that the Society of Antiquaries should undertake a proper archaeological
investigation. After the fall of the stone at the start of the century
William Gowland had undertaken a very small excavation, but the work done
by Colonel Hawley between 1919 and 1926 was far more extensive, resulting
in the stripping of half of the centre of the monument. Hawley worked
either with gangs of workmen, or sometimes on his own, over very long
seasons. He published a series of interim reports in the Antiquaries Journal
(Hawley 1926, etc.), but the definitive site report did not appear until
1995 (Cleal, Walker and Montague 1995).
The origins of the debate over road access to Stonehenge,
which this dicument addresses, can be found in the period immediately
after the First World War. During the War, much of the area immediately
surrounding Stonehenge had been used as an aerodrome. There were makeshift
buildings associated with this, a horse hospital, a pair of cottages,
a café and a series of advertising hoardings, and when some of
the land was given back to its owners by the War Office in 1927 they proceeded
set up a pig farm. The struggle to improve the immediate surroundings
of the site began in 1930, with a national subscription organised by Sir
Lionel Earle to buy 1500 acres of this land and turn it over to the National
Trust (Chippindale 1983: 174). This set up a situation in which the monument
was in the hands of the Office of Works, later the Department of the Environment,
and eventually English Heritage, but the surrounding land was owned by
the National Trust. The clutter on the land was torn down, and with the
increasing access to motor transport in the inter-war years visitors climbed
to 20,000 a year. In 1935 a patch of the National Trust land was leased
as a car park, to discourage people from parking around the monument itself.
It was this on-the-spot decision which effectively decided where the visitor
facilities which still exist today should be located. In the post-war
period this area was tarmaced, and an underground café, toilets,
bookshop and entrance tunnel under the road added. In 1933 the Office
of Works had recommended that this road, the A344 from Amesbury to Shrewton,
should be closed.
Between 1950 and 1964 another campaign of excavations was
undertaken, by Stuart Piggott, Richard Atkinson and J.F.S. Stone. Initially,
this digging was undertaken in order to facilitate the restoration and
concreting of certain stones, but gradually Atkinson began to dig more
and more in an attempt to make sense of Hawley's records (Cleal, Walker
and Montague 1995: 15-