{"id":359296,"date":"2025-08-20T11:26:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T11:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/359296\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T11:26:15","slug":"godstone-sinkhole-linked-to-burst-water-main-engineers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/359296\/","title":{"rendered":"Godstone sinkhole linked to burst water main, engineers say"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes you find one, sometimes you miss them,” he said, adding that the work has been made more complicated by underground electrical cables and gas and water pipes.<\/p>\n

“We have to make sure when we’ve finished this thing doesn’t fall down again,” he said. “Because this is a busy road, normally, with big lorries coming through.”<\/p>\n

Residents have been aware of the network of tunnels<\/a> under Godstone for decades.<\/p>\n

They were dug in the mid 1800s as the high quality sand in the area was excavated to supply glass-makers. <\/p>\n

Unofficial mines were created by property owners digging underneath their gardens and creating the warren of tunnels which are now causing SCC’s engineers such a headache.<\/p>\n

The BBC has confirmed that one tunnel in the area is still accessible via a locked entrance, but has agreed not to give its location to avoid people trying to break in.<\/p>\n

However, a local businessman said he had been into the tunnel in recent weeks, passing on a photo of a perfectly preserved space cut into the sandstone.<\/p>\n

Mr Allen said he had never dealt with an engineering problem like it, since most landslips and sinkholes were created by naturally occurring geology.<\/p>\n

It can now take 20 minutes to drive around the diversion required to get from one side of the hole to the other, around 100 yards apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Sometimes you find one, sometimes you miss them,” he said, adding that the work has been made more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-359296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115060852838073676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}