A VIGIL is being held outside the Royal Courts of Justice for three days this week.
It is in support of the Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site’s legal challenge against the decision to build a tunnel past Stonehenge.
Sacred Earth Activism – which says it "works to connect communities, people and institutions with earth, nature and the sacred", will be in London from Wednesday to Friday.
Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) will face the Department for Transport’s Grant Shapps at the RCJ to decide the fate of Stonehenge World Heritage Site, which is threatened by an extensive road-widening scheme and tunnel.
Only the legal teams and representatives of the claimants are allowed to attend the hearing person, but a link is available for everyone else to register with the court to watch it remotely.
Sacred Earth Activism lit a sacred fire just before sunset on Sunday, June 20, as part of the weekend’s Solstice celebrations at the Stonehenge Heritage Action Camp, less than a mile from the Stones.
During the ceremony, the spirits of the land and of the ancestors were called in and asked for help to sway the judicial review in favour of protecting the sacred landscape.
The sacred fire will be kept alight until after the court decides whether Grant Schapps’ approval of the scheme was legal.
A candle lit from the fire will be transported up to the Royal Courts of Justice on Strand, where a group of activists will be maintaining a vigil for the duration of the hearing. The flame will be kept alight both at the camp and outside the court until the proceedings close.
"We are here for all those who hold Stonehenge and its surrounding landscape sacred. For thousands of years, this landscape has been a sacred place of ceremony, of pilgrimage, of honouring the turning of the seasons and the ancestors, and now they intend to carve through it for short-term and ill-thought-out road developments,” said Jonathan Weekes of Sacred Earth Activism.
“The construction of a flyover, compounds, roundabouts and cuttings for access to the tunnel will seriously harm the landscape, local wildlife and archaeological integrity of this sacred place, overshadowing the majesty of the Stones – completely inappropriate for a World Heritage Site.”
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