Members of the Stonehenge Alliance have conducted a protest outside the British Museum in London in a bid to stop a £1.7 billion road improvement.

They say plans to upgrade the A303 past the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge stone circle will cause "significant" harm to the World Heritage Site.

John Adams, chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, said: "Stonehenge is one of the most impressive megalithic structures in the world and the World Heritage Site has the densest concentration of burial mounds anywhere in Britain.

"The road scheme would require massive civil engineering works within the World Heritage Site, with huge damage to this unique landscape. Even the Transport Secretary accepted the road would cause significant harm.

"The scheme was firmly rejected by five senior Planning Inspectors and by UNESCO and in 2021 the High Court quashed the development consent for the scheme. The Stonehenge Alliance is asking the Government to think again.

"We need a new approach that improves people’s access to the South West without damaging the World Heritage Site or increasing carbon emissions. There are better schemes the government could spend £2bn on."

The Stonehenge Alliance campaigners staged their protest outside the museum’s main entrance on Great Russell Street from 12.30 to 1:30pm on Thursday - the opening day of the British Museum’s major exhibition 'The World of Stonehenge'.

Their aim was to warn visitors that the Stonehenge World Heritage Site near Salisbury is still 'under threat' from a £1.7 billion major road scheme.

Holding placards and banners, they handed out fliers to protest against thegGovernment’s A303 Stonehenge road-widening project.

It would move the A303 into a two-mile (3.2km) tunnel under the World Heritage Site, completing the removal of traffic begun with the 2012 closure of the A344 road.

The scheme includes a new dual carriageway, with deep cuttings to twin-bore tunnels for part of its length, along with a massive flyover beside Blick Mead Mesolithic site on the eastern boundary. 

There is also a motorway-scale interchange at the western boundary, close to Longbarrow Roundabout and the magnificent Winterbourne Stoke prehistoric barrow cemetery.

Even though permission for it was quashed by the High Court in July 2021, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps now intends to re-determine the scheme.