English Heritage unveils Stonehenge visitor centre

English Heritage has revealed details of the £27m visitor centre it is building at Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The centre will open on 18 December and is the culmination of a long-standing aim to replace the poor visitor facilities at the prehistoric monument. A number of previous plans failed because of planning and funding problems. “This building [the visitor centre] is the culmination of 85 years of debate,” said English Heritage chief executive Simon Thurley. “The first planning application was put in 22 years ago and there have been at least four different locations where planning permission has been put in and planning enquiries held and planning battles fought. In the end this was the location which the fewest number of people objected to.” The centre is 1.5 miles from Stonehenge and visitors will be transported to the stones via a 10-minute shuttle ride. It will include a permanent exhibition, temporary exhibition space, a 360-degree virtual immersive experience, education space, shop and cafe. The exhibition will feature nearly 300 prehistoric artefacts, including finds from the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, the Wiltshire Museum, and the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge. Entry to the visitor centre will be by timed ticket, although English Heritage has not revealed the cost yet. But the organisation said it will still be free to visit Stonehenge during the summer and winter solstices, when thousands of people arrive at the historic monument. The programme of improvements at Stonehenge is the largest capital project English Heritage has carried out. It has been financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund, commercial income and philanthropic donations including gifts from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Linbury Trust and the Wolfson Foundation. The architect for the scheme is Denton Corker Marshall, and the exhibition design is by Haley Sharpe.   English Heritage is redeveloping the facilities at Stonehenge in three stages. Following the opening of the visitor centre in December, recreated Neolithic houses will be unveiled in Easter 2014 and the landscaping will be complete by summer 2014. Thurley said English Heritage’s plans for Stonehenge would not end there, as it still wanted the section of the A303 that passes the stones to close: "It is English Heritage’s view that the future has to be some sort of tunnel. “It is absolutely imperative that the road goes and the stones return to the tranquillity of the chalk downland in which they were originally built.”