The Vision for the Future

The vision for the future is based on the need to conserve, enhance and interpret the significance of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

The Vision for the Stonehenge World Heritage Site

The facilities, built in 1968, are inadequate for the 900,000 annual visitors to Stonehenge The Stonehenge World Heritage Site is globally important not just for Stonehenge, but for its unique and dense concentration of outstanding prehistoric monuments and sites, which together form a landscape without parallel. We will care for and safeguard this special area and its archaeology and will provide a more tranquil, biodiverse and rural setting for it, allowing present and future generations to enjoy it and the landscape more fully. We will also ensure that its special qualities are presented, interpreted and enhanced where necessary, so that visitors can better understand the extraordinary achievements of the prehistoric peoples who left us this rich legacy.

The primary purpose of the Management Plan is to guide all interested parties on the care of this World Heritage Site by sustaining its Outstanding Universal Value. This will ensure the effective protection, conservation, and presentation of the World Heritage Site for present and future generations. It will also ensure that all decisions affecting the World Heritage Site move towards the achievement of the Vision.

Priorities of the Management Plan for 2009-2015

The Avenue – Stonehenge and the Avenue will be reunited when the A344 is closed to traffic and grassed over. The priorities of the Management Plan for 2009-2015 are to:

• maintain and extend permanent grassland to protect buried archaeology from ploughing and to provide an appropriate setting for upstanding monuments
• remove the woodland and scrub cover from key monuments
• remove or screen inappropriate structures or roads, in particular the A344, and keep the A303 improvements under review
• enhance the visitor experience by 2012 by providing improved interim facilities
• improve the interpretation of the  WHS and increase access to selected  monuments 
• continue to encourage sustainable archaeological research and education to improve and transmit our understanding of the WHS
• encourage the sustainable management of the WHS, balancing its  needs with those of farming, nature conservation, access, landowners and the local community