THE high price of the new Visitors’ Centre at Stonehenge mentioned by Colonel Heggle in the Journal of January 1 is only the tip of the iceberg in the financial saga of English Heritage’s (EH) management of Stonehenge.

When Sir Jocelyn Stevens decided that he wanted the centre at Countess Roundabout, a firm of Australian architects was employed and they even got as far as building scale models of the proposal and I well remember their frequent trips from Down Under to inspect progress. A local house was even purchased at a vastly inflated price to give access to the site because the owner at that time was a lot sharper than EH, and all this expenditure was eventually written off nonchalantly by EH.

They then tinkered with the idea of siting a centre at King's Barrow Ridge before settling on the present site, where it would inconvenience fewer people. Added to all this expense should be the cost of the public inquiry in 2004 which dismissed the idea of the proposed Stonehenge tunnel as being too expensive at £5billion.

Vast sums of money have already been written off getting to the present situation and we should question whether we have got value for money and whether a minority of people should allow the tunnel idea to be resurrected at a huge cost to the taxpayer just because EH thinks it's a good idea.

Dr Tony Munday

Haxton