COTSWOLD Water Park could soon be the home to an updated version of Stonehenge.

Plans are being discussed to build a full scale version of the famous Wiltshire landmark how it would have looked 5,000 years ago.

Preseli Bluestone, the company behind the £15 million scheme, is hoping to create a new 21st century landmark and have marked out the water park as a potential site.

Dr Colin Shearing, creative director of Preseli Bluestone Ltd, said: "We don't want to replicate Stonehenge as it stands today but rather as how it would have looked when completed about 5,000 years ago."

The Shearing family own the quarry in Wales where the rocks for Stonehenge were carved from.

Only three circles are left of the original Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, but the company plans to reconstruct all seven.

The new Stonehenge will also be aligned with the equinox and the solstices like the original World Heritage site.

To replicate how Stonehenge originally looked Dr Shearing said they would need to collect over three hundred giant stones from all over the world at a cost of over £10 million.

He said: "The Preseli Bluestones will make up one of these circles with different stones brought from around the world used for the other circles, making it a truly international project."

However, the project has been slammed as a money-making scheme by druids.

Morgan Rhys-Adams, the druid priestess of Avebury, said: "It is obviously all about money.

"Druids like myself realise what a sacred place Stonehenge is. If it was a good idea to build it in the water park then it would have been done 5,000 years ago."

The chief executive of the Cotswold Water Park Society, Dennis Grant, said: "In principle the society is in favour of the scheme. It would have to be done in consideration of the community and we would have to examine the impact on traffic and business costs."

In response to the claims of the druids, Mr Grant said: "Of course it is a commercial venture. Madame Tussauds and Warwick Castle are both there to make money but that doesn't stop it being educational does it."

Visitors would be able to walk amongst the stones and touch them but, despite earlier reports, the site will not be done up as a theme park and will not feature guides dressed as druids.

However, the scheme is stuck in the pipeline until planning permission is approved by Cotswold District Council.