Thursday 1 October 2015

Sinkhole of the week


A large sinkhole has appeared in St Albans, but, puzzlingly, no one is even venturing to guess what caused it, which must be a bit worrying for those whose houses are next to it.

8 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sink holes are a bit mainstream nowadays, but yes, the absence of an explanation puzzled me too

Bayard said...

"Sink holes are a bit mainstream nowadays,"

Is that because there are more of them and if so why might that be, do you think? Or is it just that they have become somehow more newsworthy?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Are there more of them? Or are they just given more coverage? I don't know. Ask me about cow attacks instead.

Sackerson said...

Cavities caused by decaying mass cow burials.

FrankC said...

Nobody would admit to seeing a huge worm, would they?

H said...

I seem to recall reading that this one was caused by compacted rubbish becoming less compact over time. The revelation that this estate has been built on the site of a rubbish dump has presumably been suppressed by a shadowy conspiracy of estate agents and homeowners!

Graeme said...

H it is quite common to build over old rubbish dumps. Essentially, any house built outside the old walls of any city or town in Britain is likely to be built over a rubbish pit of some kind. Where else did they dump the trash in those days? Even in Victorian times, when they used to cart the city manure down to the country, they still dumped bottles and household waste just outside the town, in places where nobody lived at that time. Unpopular though he might be on this blog, it is all recorded in Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, for example.

Graeme said...

H, more houses than you might imagine are built on old rubbish dumps. In the days when towns had walls around them, where did they dump the trash? Even in Victorian times, when the roadside manure was carted out overnight to rural areas, household waste, bottles etc just accumulated in areas just outside the reach of the town. Although he is not popular on this blog because he apparently miscategorised the 19thc, you can find details in Ficken, eg Our Mutual Friend, with its character Mr Boffin, the Golden Dustman.