A council has approved plans to install a “jarring” 13ft column in the car park at a designated World Heritage Site dating back 5,000 years.
The plans were submitted to Wiltshire Council by the National Trust to construct a pole, comparable in height to a double-decker bus, at the site of the Avebury stone circle.
The structure, fitted with a satellite link and solar panel, will support new solar-powered parking terminals to replace the existing pay-and-display machines.
Reports indicate the column will function as a communications tower, enabling visitors to make phone payments in the area where mobile signal is notoriously poor.
The Avebury Society, a civic and heritage group dedicated to safeguarding the World Heritage Site, has formally objected to the application.
The organisation expressed concern while the column may sit outside the direct sightline of those standing within the stone circle, it falls “well within the setting of the monument and will in particular have an impact on people’s perceptions of it”.
The group argued arriving visitors would be greeted by modern technology before seeing the stone circle, harming their experience of the site.
“For visitors coming to Avebury to see a Neolithic monument, their first sight will be of modern electronic equipment, which will be incongruous and jarring,” the society said.
The plans were submitted to Wiltshire Council by the National Trust to construct a pole at the site of the Avebury stone circle
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Built during the late Neolithic period between 2850 BC and 2200 BC, the site originally featured 100 sarsen stones, but as Christianity spread and ancient beliefs were viewed as pagan, many of the standing stones were deliberately toppled, broken, or buried.
Wiltshire Council’s planning officers acknowledged the tower “would be discernible from certain viewpoints” around the site.
However, they concluded it “would not result in the loss of landscape features, significant alteration to landscape character, or interruption of key landscape views”.
They said the decision weighed the heritage concerns raised by the Avebury Society against the practical benefits of modernising the car park’s payment infrastructure.
Planners ultimately determined the visual impact of the column was not sufficient to warrant refusing the application, despite the site’s archaeological significance.
The National Trust said the column’s positioning within the car park had been “carefully considered to reduce its prominence for visitors”.
A spokesman confirmed “the site of the column is not in a direct line of sight from the prehistoric monuments of the World Heritage Site”.
To minimise its visual impact, the structure will feature a “slim profile and matt brown finish”, designed to help it blend with surrounding trees.
Archaeological surveys must be completed before any construction work can begin
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Approval of the scheme carries one condition – that archaeological surveys must be completed before any construction work can begin, reflecting the sensitivity of the ground beneath the site.
Earlier this year, the National Trust fought for trees around the ancient stone circle and Avebury village to be cut back.
The National Trust’s countryside office applied to Wiltshire Council for permission to fell or cut back 14 trees in the conservation area, for reasons including potential damage to structures and safety.
A spokesman for the trust said at the time that the list included an overgrown Leylandii that should be felled to ground level before it caused further damage to the sarsen stone wall.