Showing posts with label New Stonehenge Visitor Centre - English Heritage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Stonehenge Visitor Centre - English Heritage. Show all posts

Thursday 20 April 2017

Major improvements for group visitors at Stonehenge

English Heritage has opened a newly-designed permanent coach park at Stonehenge.

It marks the completion of the first phase of a major improvement project aimed at giving tour groups arriving by coach a better and more streamlined welcome to the World Heritage Site and at easing pressure points for all visitors at the popular site at peak times.

The re-designed coach park provides spaces for 52 60-seater coaches in an upgraded layout which makes coach arrivals and departures more efficient and enhances pedestrian safety.

A new Visitor Transit Shuttle pick up point now allows groups to go directly from the coach park to the Stone Circle, where an enlarged drop off/pick up layout has also been created.

The new system makes the shuttle service more fluid and flexible so that it can provide more visitor journeys at times of peak pressure if required.

Phase two of the improvement project is scheduled for completion by late summer.

It will see the opening of a new group reception building, complete with extensive WC facilities, located conveniently close to the coach parking bays and next to the shuttle pick up point.

The improvements are already making arrivals, parking and departures easier and the movement of pedestrians safer within the coach park.

The addition of the Group Reception Building in the summer will simplify and speed up ticketing and audio guide collection and provide double the number of WCs currently on site.

Jennifer Davies, Stonehenge general manager said: “We are delighted to have opened the first phase with minimal impact to group arrivals while the work was underway.

“The improvement project was implemented following an extensive review of our operation at Stonehenge and feedback from tourism professionals to find the best way to meet demand and ease congestion at this significant and busy attraction.

“Once complete, the improvements will help us deliver a world class experience for the 1.3 million visitors we welcome each year from across the globe, so that they can more fully appreciate this ancient wonder of human endeavour.”    
Article source: Travel News

The Stonehenge Tourist Blog

Monday 16 November 2009

[FIRST LOOK] This blog can reveal the first official pictures of Denton Corker Marshall’s (DCM) new £20 million Stonehenge visitor centre in Wiltshire




The designs were unveiled as a planning application for the visitor centre on the Airman’s Corner plot – along with an application to close the A344 that runs next to the Stones – was made to Wiltshire Council.

The scheme features a perforated undulating canopy, supported by a forest of thin columns, which sits ‘lightly in the landscape above a pair of self-contained pods’ on a limestone pavement. The transparent, glazed box will house a shop and a cafĂ© while the other solid ‘pod’ - clad in locally sourced chestnut wood - will be home to the exhibition space (click here to see early sketches).


DCM landed the contest to design the new facility back in February – effectively for a second time following the demise of its original £65 million proposals in 2007 – seeing off Bennetts Associates and Edward Cullinan Architects in the process.

Stephen Quinlan, director of architects’ Denton Corker Marshall, said: ‘Designing a visitor centre at a site of such importance is both a major challenge and a serious responsibility. Our proposal, above all, seeks not to compromise the solidity and timelessness of the Stones, but to satisfy the brief with a design which is universally accessible, environmentally sensitive, and at the same time appears almost transitory in nature.

He added: ‘If once back at home, a visitor can remember their visit to the stones but can’t remember the visitor centre they passed through on the way, we will be happy.


‘The biggest challenge has been the centre’s setting on open grassland. There is nowhere to hide unlike the previous scheme which was camouflaged.’

Speaking to the AJ, Quinlan admitted the practice, which has a six-strong team working on the scheme, almost didn’t enter the second contest. However the London-based director decided to have another crack partly to counter accusations of ‘sour grapes’ following the demise of the practice’s original, sub-terranean proposals [on a different plot to the North East of the Stones].

The long-running visitor centre project has been rumbling since 1986 and is set to be funded by English Heritage (EH), Highways Agency, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Transport and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

EH told the AJ that it had factored in the possibility of a public enquiry into its timescale but still hopes the centre will be open in time for London’s Olympic Games in 2012. The total budget for the scheme, including roadworks, is £27.5 million.