The Stonehenge Local Residents Pass and the Good Ladies of Amesbury Library

I thought it might be prudent to check to see whether or not the process to get hold of a Stonehenge Residents Pass was as easy as the folk at English Heritage this morning had led me to believe.  After all, I wouldn't want anyone to go to their local library, as instructed, and find that they didn't issue them.  It turns out that there is only one library that issues these passes and that is Amesbury Library - at least that is what the two nice librarians I spoke to today told me.  Surprising that the Mobile Library that tootles round some of the villages doesn't issue them as well.

The entire process was very straightforward and curiously old-fashioned.  A quick check of a piece of ID that links your name to an address in a local village, then the nice librarian fills in name, address and date and you sign it.  That's it - no photo, no digital record.

What did concern me was the small pile of 20-30 blank cards held by Amesbury Library.  Trying to be helpful, I suggested that they might want to consider getting a few more in, what with all the publicity around the new visitors centre and the furore that was being kicked up about the state of the traffic.  The two lady librarians did a bit of a double take when I mentioned that over 30,000 locals might be eligible for the pass.  After due consideration, they thought they might ask the English Heretics Heritage people for more.

So, shop early to avoid disappointment.  You have been warned.  But do be nice to the librarians, they are really helpful.

UPDATE 02/10/13

I had a call last night to ask exactly which residents were entitled to the free pass.  Well Cecil Chubb's initial donation of Stonehenge to the government in 1918 mentioned only Shrewton, Netheravon, Durrington and Amesbury.  This was later extended to residents of all the parishes that made up the old Rural District of Amesbury.  The 1911 Census indicates the Rural District of Amesbury comprised:

Amesbury
Maddington
Orcheston St George
Orcheston St Mary
Rollestone
Shrewton
Tilshead
Winterbourne Stoke
Amesbury
Bulford
Durnford
Durrington
Figheldean
Milston
Wilsford cum Lake
Woodford
Allington
Boscombe
Cholderton
Idmiston
Newton Toney
Winterbourne Dauntsey
Winterbourne Earls
Winterbourne Gunner

Some of these may come as a bit of a surprise; even to the residents of the villages involved.  Don't be backwards about coming forwards to get your free Stonehenge Local Residents Pass

English Heritage Lay on Publicity Event for WiSBAng - Well Actually it's the Launch of the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, But No Need to Let Them Have All the Fun

A "Friend of WiSBAng" has passed on the following helpful information:





STOP PRESS: WEDS 18TH DECEMBER – LAUNCH CEREMONY

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-24329692

Put this date in your diary and make sure you have your Stonehenge Residents Passes ready.

If you weren't aware of the fact, the 30,000 local residents living in and around Stonehenge can, indeed should, take up the offer of free access to Stonehenge.

Just 5% of that 30,000 in a wholly peaceful queue on the day with some catchy placards would get our message across. Imagine the chaos if 10% turned up (that’s 3000 protestors). What about the administrative gridlock if 30% of us applied/re-applied for the free passes to which we are entitled under statute - a condition laid down when Stonehenge was gifted to the nation - that’s 9000 calls to process! As you may know, the procedure itself is stone-age, but English Heritage’s membership team will tell you how: 0870 333 1181

We've deliberately quoted the central membership number at EH HQ for fear of ruining the poor dear's life at their local office.

To be honest, all you really need to do is turn up at your local Library with proof of residence in a local village and ask for a Stonehenge Residents Permit - but place a call to English Heritage anyway.

Footnote.

Some wag has already suggested that each local village donates 1square metre of land to a "fighting fund". We divide each of these plots up into 1 million 1 sq mm parcels of land and offer them for sale on eBay.  As a landowner, you'd be entitled to residency and therefore free access to Stonehenge - now that might really set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Update:

Some helpfully inadvertent advice from Susan Greaney, an archaeologist and the Stonehenge museum’s curator,  who observed the following about the former denizens of Stonehenge.

 'They were able to pool together vast resources to construct this extraordinary monument using only simple tools.’  A good lesson for those of us today. 

We need to pool together our resources to ensure that A303 is dualled asap, using only the simple tools available to us like the internet, the press and a wealth of animal cunning.

Setting the Scene

Winterbourne Stoke is a small Wiltshire village that sits astride the A303.  If you’ve ever travelled along this road at any time from Thursday lunchtime to Monday evening – at any time of year – you’ve probably been stuck in a traffic jam in the village.

For that reason alone, you might appreciate why local villagers have been campaigning for a by-pass for over 30 years and why we are now losing patience with those in local, regional, national and even international government who have blocked every attempt to improve the situation.

Why has nothing been done to bypass the Winterbourne Stoke?  The answer is simple – Stonehenge and English Heritage. 

It has been suggested that those in authority have demonstrated, by their actions in relation to Stonehenge and their inaction with respect to the local population, that they care more for the dead than they do the living.   Actually, that isn’t true.  They only care about the ancient dead.  They clearly don’t give a tuppeny damn about those recently killed, permanently maimed or injured on the A303 around Winterbourne Stoke despite their fine words and pretence of concern regarding accident statistics. 

English Heritage and the Highways Agency colluded in their decision to close A344 junction with A303 by Stonehenge this summer, on the grounds of restoring the “historic landscape” and also because of the dangerous nature of the junction – in the last 5 years a single accident resulting in serious injury and one resulting in a slight injury.  Is that a reasonable reaction, or were both agencies indulging in egregious hyperbole? 

Worse still, by a considerable margin, was the collusion of Wiltshire Council, who you might have expected to be a voice of reason and to stand up for the interests of the people on whose behalf they are employed.  Not a bit of it.  They went back on their word, of over 20 years standing, to NOT consider closing the A344 until the A303 was turned into a dual carriageway.

As you sit in your traffic jam as it crawls through our village, glaring angrily at villagers who have the temerity to try and cross the A303 at the one, pedestrian-controlled crossing on the entire length of the A303, you might be forgiven for thinking that it would be hard to get involved in a high-speed, fatal car crash in Winterbourne Stoke.  How wrong you would be!  If the road isn’t at a stand still, it sees traffic travelling at well above the 40mph speed limit and we have carnage on the roads.

Let me put this into context.  If all those killed and injured on the stretch of the A303 immediately either side of Winterbourne Stoke had come from the village, then over ONLY the last 5 years:

1 in 10 households would have had a family member killed

1 in 4 households would have had a family member maimed

Every household would have had someone injured seriously enough to become a police statistic.

Things are even worse if you just consider this same 5 year period and the 1mile stretch of the A303 through the village:

2 dead, 3 seriously injured and 6 injured seriously enough to become police statistics.

Based on the English Heritage/Highways Agency/Wiltshire Council logic, then the A303 should have been closed to through traffic years ago to protect the Neolithic landscape in and around Winterbourne Stoke and to prevent the carnage on the A303.  Tearing up the road surface and restoring it as an ancient sheep drove to Honiton seems a sensible, inexpensive and achievable option.

And it has advantages for you my dear beleaguered, yet sadly static, travellers.  You’d have to find an alternative route to or from the West Country and wouldn’t get stuck here or risk life and limb when the road is open.   We could apply the same approach to the roads around Shrewton and the A36 around Stapleford, so you couldn’t get stuck there either.