From The Guardian:
Bypass blocked by stone-age fireplace
Andrew Clark, transport correspondent
Monday December 8, 2003
The Guardian
A stone-age family who lit a campfire on a riverbank near Salisbury 250,000 years ago have dealt a blow to a controversial scheme to build a "bypass by stealth".
Archaeologists working for Wiltshire county council have discovered traces of ancient charcoal alongside horse bones and 44 flint axes in a trench dug along the route of a new relief road.
They think the find could be the earliest evidence of man-made fire in Europe, indicating that early hominids learned how to build fires to keep warm before the emergence of Homo sapiens.
Helena Cave Perry, a council archaeologist, described the find as "of national significance". Road work has been halted, and the development has given new hope to opponents of the scheme.
Environmentalists accuse the county council of quietly reviving a £76m bypass around the city that was cancelled by the Labour government after it won power in 1997. At the time, protesters said it would spoil a spectacular view of the water meadows beneath Salisbury cathedral's spire, immortalised by the painter John Constable.
Critics now point to proposals for two new roads - one skirting the village of Harnham to the south of Salisbury and the other around the Wylye Valley to the north-west.
Margaret Willmot, secretary of the pressure group Salisbury Transport 2000, said: "There is no way you can put a bypass around Salisbury without going over environmentally sensitive areas."
The council says it needs to reduce the number of lorries thundering through Salisbury. The city is on the A36 - a direct route between Bristol and Southampton that is heavily used by freight traffic.
A council official admitted that the new roads amounted to "half a bypass". But he said the southern relief road would provide easier access to an industrial estate, diverting 9,000 vehicles a day away from Harnham.
Anti-roads groups say lorries from Bristol should be diverted onto the M4 to relieve pressure on communities.
The ancient campfire has halted the council's proposal in its tracks - at least temporarily.
Susan Smith, an English Heritage ancient monuments expert, said: "You often find the odd stone-age axe, but this is something else. It's a very important find."
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road