The Home Counties sinkhole that swallowed a CAR! Family flee village home after their VW disappears into 30ft-deep crater which appeared overnight

A 30ft sinkhole has appeared overnight in a Home Counties driveway, swallowing an entire car just yards away from where a family slept.
The gaping pit swallowed the Volkswagen Lupo after opening suddenly in the middle of the night,
in the Buckinghamshire village of Walter's Ash.
The car was just identifiable through its muddy covering, lying at the bottom of the pit, which was 30ft deep and about 15ft across.


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The doomed VW Lupo at the bottom of the crevice belonged to teenager Zoe Smith.
Her stepfather Phil Conran told of the dramatic moment they discovered Zoe's car was at the bottom of the hole.
Speaking from inside the property, the 59-year-old environmental consultant said: 'We hadn't heard anything at all. There was no indication whatsoever. We don't know what happened.

'At 7am my daughter normally goes up to the stables. She went out the front door and instead of her car being there, there was a huge hole.

'I was gobsmacked. The first thing I did was phone the police because we didn't know what to do.
'We weren't absolutely sure the car was in there but it seemed too much of a coincidence for it not to be.'

Mr Conran, who is the vice-chairman of Hughenden Parish Council, said the police suggested they talk to the local district council. They sent officers to the scene anyway and once there they realised the scale of the situation, they requested firefighters be brought in.

 

The doomed VW Lupo at the bottom of the crevice belonged to teenager Zoe Smith (stock picture)

Zoe had had the second-hand Lupo for about three years and although it was insured, its loss leaves the 19-year-old stranded and facing a large bill to replace it.
He added: The real shock of all this is had she gone out and been inside it when it sank in the mud, the horror of what might have been overtakes any other concerns you might have had.
'All you can see is part of the side of it and it's filled with mud.'
A spokesman for the fire service said: 'At 8.32am firefighters were called to a sinkhole which swallowed a parked car in the driveway of a house.
'Firefighters placed a cordon around it and gave safety advice. The incident was handed over to building control.'
Watch manager Stuart Grosse added: 'A hole has opened up outside of the property in the driveway where the family leave their car.
'They parked it there last night and woke up to find it covered in mud at the bottom of this hole.

 

The giant hole is about 15ft in diameter and 30ft deep and appeared in the drive just feet away from the wall of the house

 

The wet weather in December and January may have caused the hole, at the house by eroding earth used to fill in the old clay, stone and chalk pits

'We get a few calls of this nature, mainly in the south of the county. Historically, holes have appeared in the area due to clay mining.'
The wet weather in December and January may have caused the hole, at the house by eroding earth used to fill in the old clay, stone and chalk pits.
A local historian stated on the community website: 'Earlier inhabitants of Naphill and Walter's Ash made a living by digging on the Common and in the fields - digging for clay to make bricks, for chalk to make agricultural lime and for stone to shape as building and road making materials.
'The records show this going back from the 1950s to the early 1800s, and such activity may have started many years before that.'
In the 1840s there were 10 bricklayers listed as living in the tiny settlement.
The website added: 'Stone masonry was carried on side by side with the better known brick yards of Walter's Ash. Stones were commonly found in the deep pits from which the brickmakers clay had been extracted.'