Kings Mills closed again after second wall collapse

The road was abruptly shut again on Saturday night after the wall of the former Curle’s Garden Centre site slumped further.

The wall’s owner said yesterday he had made repeated efforts over nearly two decades to ensure that the wall would not collapse in periods of high rainfall.

But now he and his insurers face a major repair job and the extent of the closure of the road is unknown.

‘The important thing is that no one was hurt and the wall is insured,’ said Dudley Eddy.

He has owned the site since about 2007, after getting to know previous owner, who had repaired the wall after it last collapsed in 2003.

‘As soon as I bought it, I started on the drainage,’ he said.

‘There’s a whole network of drains and we put in large drainage pipes through the wall.’

Concrete-lined streams criss-cross the site to pick up surface water that is coming down the steep hill and carrying it to an outflow pipe. The pipe then goes under a gravel track above the five-metre tall roadside wall and then out onto the road.

There are numerous six-inch drainage holes along the wall and there is also a concrete drain directly along the top of the wall, to stop water flowing to the wall and then seeping down.

But something seems to have gone wrong to contribute to the recent collapses of stonework.

One possibility is that water could have got between the pipe running under the track and the concrete lining it, allowing water get into the ground and build up behind the wall.

After the 2003 collapse it had been hard to get insurance for the wall for five years. But after carefully maintaining the wall, including repointing stonework, installing the new drains and keeping it weed-free, it was able to be reinsured.

Mr Eddy, 69, said the wall first came down at about 10pm on New Year’s Day.

He said many people had worked hard to get the road reopened on Saturday morning – before the schools restarted this week – with earth and granite cleared.

But 22mm of rain, nearly a week’s average for this time of year, fell on Saturday afternoon, and at about 9pm on Saturday there was further landslip, forcing the latest closure.

Yesterday it was not yet clear what the next step would be.

Mr Eddy said he hoped for the wall to be propped up in the short term, which might allow a single lane of traffic to use the road, managed by temporary traffic lights.

He said he would be speaking to the States today.

In terms of longer-term repairs, he will be speaking to his insurers.

At this stage motorists are being advised to avoid the area, with access to the Fleur du Jardin Hotel from the western end of the road.