THE AVEBURY SOCIETY
Registered with the Civic Trust
From the Chairman, Alastair Service, CBE
Swan House, Avebury,
Wiltshire SN8 1AH
13th October 2005
Mr
Francesco Bandarin,
Director, UNESCO World Heritage Centre,
7 Place de Fontenoy,
75352 Paris
07 SP,
France.
Dear Mr Bandarin,
I have been asked by the Committee of The Avebury Society to let you know of our concern about the revised World Heritage Site (WHS) Management Plan for Avebury. We took part in the discussion process for the revised Plan and are represented on the Avebury Management WHS Plan Steering Group and its two sub-groups.
We are aware that English Heritage, publishers of the Management Plan, wish to change the nature of the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage Site from what we have always considered to be a cultural landscape (even though, at the time of nomination, this category did not exist) to what amounts to little more than that of a group of scheduled monuments.
We believe that this approach, which does not meet with our approval, arises directly out of the attempt by English Heritage and the DCMS to justify the Government’s A303 Improvement scheme at Stonehenge. Unfortunately, the A303 Inquiry Inspector was persuaded by their argument that so long as the Scheduled monuments were not physically damaged by the new road scheme, then the outstanding universal value of the Stonehenge WHS would not be affected. We note that ICOMOS-UK, like ourselves, did not agree with this argument at the A303 Inquiry.
We now find that the newly published Avebury WHS Management Plan appears to categorise only the key monuments at Avebury as being of World Heritage Outstanding Universal Value; while the ‘rich archaeological landscape spanning 10,000 years’ much of which is yet to be investigated, is only to be considered as of ‘Cultural Heritage Value’. The Nomination Document, however, shows that the justification for inclusion of Stonehenge and Avebury in the World Heritage List was that ‘Stonehenge and Avebury . . . together with the associated sites and monuments . . . provide a landscape without parallel in Britain and elsewhere’. We believe that the archaeological landscape must be considered an integral part of the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage Site and that we and our Government should be committed to its continuing conservation and presentation as a whole.
During the process of revising the Avebury Management Plan, the ‘Statement of Significance’ of the WHS that appeared in the consultation draft was removed and we were told that a revised Statement of Significance would be drawn up by WHS ‘stakeholders’.
We find, under para. 2.15 of the July 2005 Periodic Report for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site supplied to us by the WHS Management Officer, that
‘A joint Statement of Significance for Stonehenge and Avebury will be produced in 2006 on the basis of the World Heritage values identified in the Management Plans and will be submitted to the WHS Committee for approval’ (our underlining).
As we have mentioned above, we do not agree with the narrow interpretation of the World Heritage values of the Avebury part of the WHS that appears in our revised Management Plan. We continue to press for recognition of the whole WHS, including the archaeological landscape, as being of World Heritage Value.
We would be grateful if you should very kindly draw our concerns, which we hope you share, to the attention of the World Heritage Committee.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair Service
Chairman, The Avebury Society
Cc Mrs
J Baldrey, Chair, Avebury Parish Council
John MacDonald, Winterbourne Monkton
Dr Kate Fielden, WANHS
Fiona Reynolds, Director General, The National Trust
Gill Swanton, North farm West Overton
Mark Boden, CE Kennet District Council
Ewart Holmes