Scotland’s heritage agency plans to introduce an admission fee at the neolithic Calanais standing stones, one of the most popular and revered cultural sites in the Hebrides.
The fee proposal coincides with a £6m revamp of Calanais visitor facilities being built in response to a surge in tourism to the Western Isles, driven largely by day trips by cruise ship passengers.
Historic Environment Scotland said it would soon ask Scottish government ministers to approve its proposal for a fee, a move that it expects will provoke heavy criticism and resistance.
The move would put Calanais on a par with other famous neolithic sites such as Skara Brae, the subterranean coastal village on Orkney exposed by a winter storm in 1850. Initially free to visit, the village was enclosed behind a fence with entry controlled through a visitor centre that charges up to £12.50 for adults. However, Orkney’s Ring of Brodgar stone circle remains open and free to all.
Ian Fordham, the chair of Urras nan Tursachan (UnT), which owns the Calanais visitor centre and backs the fee proposal, said there was an urgent need to tackle the impact of increasing visitor numbers at the site.
He said about 120,000 tourists a year visited Calanais and that figure was expected to nearly double by 2035. They are braced for an increase in daytrippers after a new deep water port for very large cruise ships opens in Stornoway next year.
At present, the site is managed by UnT, which runs the visitor centre, and HES, which owns the standing stones and allows free admission through unlocked gates. They plan to build a larger visitor centre and fence in the site to make it a “single coherent visitor destination” with an entrance fee.
The proposal to merge it into a single site has already been approved by the UK and Scottish governments under the islands growth deal.
Fordham said they needed much better management of the site otherwise it would be “overrun in an uncontrollable fashion” by visitors.
He said problems at the Ring of Brodgar, which had to be closed for some time to build new paths and drains to cope with its surge in visitors, was a warning of what could happen at Calanais.
“With increasing footfall at the stones, there’s increasing risk of conservation damage, conservation risk to the stones,” he said. “It has become clear this year that increased visitors numbers are causing conservation issues at the stones, [in terms of] erosion.”
Malcolm McLean, a former chair of the UN-linked cultural body Unesco Scotland who has been visiting Calanais for 40 years, said he was “acutely aware” of the need to safeguard archaeological sites but an entrance fee would dismay local people.
“It will be a highly controversial decision on the island,” he said. “From a community perspective, people see this as a place that’s open and they can come and go at any time.” Many would find it “very difficult to deal with” if it was fenced in as a paying attraction, he said.
The Calanais stones were erected from about 2900BC onwards, predating the stone circle at Stonehenge, and are made up of a central stone circle to which a cruciform arrangement of stones was later added.
Set on high ground, the site boasts views over the surrounding moorland and across Loch Roag on the west coast of Lewis.
The stones are thought to have been a ritual site for approximately 2,000 years. A chambered cairn was added about 500 years after the first stones were erected.
Some archaeologists believe some of the stones were erected deliberately to align with the midsummer sunrise on Lewis. A theory that they aligned too with the full moon’s movements was popularised by the amateur archaeologist Margaret Curtis, who died in 2020.
The admission fee proposal was approved by HES’s board earlier this year and board members said it could set a precedent for other sites – an indication that charging could be imposed on other attractions. “Careful consideration is required over how the local community is engaged in this process,” the board said.