To archaeologists, the HS2 high-speed rail scheme is "one huge trench across the country", an unprecedented 350-mile bonanza that promises to open up England's ancient backbone and shoulders for meticulous study in a way never before possible.
To many historians, however, it is a colossal folly, an unwarranted assault on the nation's historic heartlands that will dislocate a wealth of precious links with the past.
Even supporters of HS2 concede that the cost to heritage of building the line is likely to be high. Opponents see the resulting gain in travel time, expressed as minutes here and there, set against centuries lost to the bulldozer.
If it goes ahead, HS2 would pass through an extraordinary range of historic landscapes, from inner London Victoriana to home counties Tudor and Elizabethan, then on to Midlands medieval and industrial, and northwards to houses and gardens in the grand style. And everywhere there is archaeology, much of it untouched and so far largely unidentified, the shards and stones of pre-Reformation and ancient Britain.
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Environmental factors arising from HS2 are being used by opponents to take the fight against the £50bn scheme beyond the UK for the first time since the line was proposed four years ago. The campaign group HS2 Action Alliance will this week make a formal complaint to the Geneva-based compliance committee of the Aarhus convention – the international agreement aimed at limiting environmental damage caused by major infrastructure schemes – to which Britain is a signatory.
Two months ago the alliance's case that the government had broken the law by not initiating a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) for HS2 was rejected by the supreme court. SEAs are enshrined in European law, a well-known and long-established element of environmental protection legislation and procedure. HS2AA contends that the court's decision leaves the UK in breach of its treaty obligations under the convention. […]
