'Historic Moment' For WIltshire's Stonehenge

21 June 2013, 06:58 | Updated: 23 June 2013, 08:19

Days after thousands of people celebrated the summer solstice at Stonehenge, the Wiltshire site is preparing for a 'historic moment'.

As part of a £27 million transformation of the site, a section of the road running alongside the monument is being permanently closed. 

The A344 will then be grassed over to turn the area back to how it was meant to look when the stones were first erected. 

Later in the year a new visitor centre will open around 1.5 miles away from the monument and visitors will be able to walk or get on a transit to the ancient stones. 

Loraine Knowles, Stonehenge director at English Heritage, said: ''It really is a historic moment. 

''When you are in Stonehenge in the future, when grass is established, you will be able to make the link between the monument and the rest of the heritage landscape to the north, accessing the avenue, the route by which the monument was approached when it was used as a place of great ceremony.''

English Heritage has wanted to close the road since it was nominated as a World Heritage site and inscribed in 1986.

To start with the road immediately adjacent to the stones will be closed, and work will begin to remove tarmac and grass it over. Once the visitor centre currently under construction opens in December, a longer section of the A344 between Stonehenge and the new facilities will be shut to traffic. 

The existing car parking and visitor facilities, first built in 1968, next to the monument will be removed and the area returned to grass.