the management of the national heritage.
Under the authority of the new English Heritage organisation, a Stonehenge
Study Group sat, and produced a report which outlined possibilities for
the future management of the area (HBMCE 1984). These included recommendations
that the surrounding landscape be drawn into the presentation of Stonehenge,
and options for resolving the issues of road access and the location of
an interpretive centre.
It was also in the 1980s that the question of access to
Stonehenge became considerably more problematic. In 1974, a free festival
had been organised in a field immediately to the north-west of Stonehenge.
From 1975 onwards, the People's Free Festival at Stonehenge was one of
the largest alternative gatherings in Britain. While many of those present
simply came for a good time, there were others like Sid Rawle who held
that Stonehenge was a spiritual centre, central to a new way of life which
was then emerging (Rosenburger 1991). For several years the festival was
effectively permitted by the authorities. In June of each year, the National
Trust would erect barbed-wire entanglements to discourage access to any
but the festival field (Chippindale 1986). On the solstice morning, the
Druids would be allowed in to the circle, and on the afternoon people
from the festival could go in and perform rites, baptisms and marriages
of their own. As a nomadic way of life developed among the alternative
community, meeting each year at Stonehenge became a fixed point in a seasonal
cycle. With the economic recession and social security cuts of the early
1980s, many of these people gave up city life, and took to the roads.
The tents of the early Stonehenge festival were replaced by buses and
vans. Increasingly, people who were constantly on the road began to move
from one festival to another throughout the summer, and the idea of a
'hippie convoy' began to develop in the popular imagination and the tabloid
press. In 1982 it was first suggested that travellers should move on from
Stonehenge to the peace camp outside the cruise missile base at Greenham
Common, and the phrase 'Peace Convoy' began to be stencilled on some of
the vehicles. In reality there was no single entity called the peace convoy,
rather than a fluid pool of travellers constantly mingling and splitting
up - but to the government of the time they appeared to be 'an army of
medieval brigands' (Rosenburger 1991).
1984 was the last year that the Stonehenge free festival
would be tolerated. Some 30,000 people attended, and left the site in
something of a mess, although the cost of clearing up should not be overestimated.
The festival had been run by a committee, who, amongst other things, had
banned professional drug dealers from the site. However, some of the latrine
pits which were dug were close to the ploughed-out round barrows of the
Cursus Group, and may possibly have done some archaeological damage (Fowler
1990). In late 1984, the National Trust announced that no festival would
be allowed on its land the following year. This was followed in April
of 1985 by a joint announcement by the National Trust and English Heritage,
supported by Wiltshire County Council, that both the festival and the
Druids would be banned from Stonehenge itself. The monument would be totally
off limits to the public for the summer solstice. Injunctions were served
to ban particular individuals from entering the county of Wiltshire in
June. Negotiations were undertaken by Green CND to attempt to find an
alternative site for the festival, but the National Trust declined, arguing
that they should not be expected to finance any such event. In late May,
a convoy of vehicles gathered at Savernake, south of Avebury, with the
aim of moving on Stonehenge and securing the festival site. They set off
on the first of June, and were met at Cholderton by 1,000 police in riot
gear. The vehicles left the road and assembled in a field where, after
an uneasy truce, the police moved in and began to pull people from vans,
beat them up, wreck vehicles and destroy personal belongings. Th