'Terrifying' sinkhole 100ft wide appears overnight in Pennines

A 100ft-wide sinkhole that is so deep the bottom cannot be seen at one end has appeared overnight just yards from a farmer's house in County Durham.

John Hensby, 71, says his partner Sam Hillyard, 39, first discovered the hole on Thursday morning, adding that it has been growing ever since.
And Mr Hensby now fears that heavy rain forecast for the coming days could be about to make the situation even worse.

Mr Hensby, 71, who lives in Cowshill, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, said: 'I am not sure where this will end.

'The hole is still growing. It is astonishing. If you could have heard the bangs, crashes and rumbles when it first happened you would understand how terrifying it was.

'My partner Sam had been walking one of our dogs when she she found it on our land around 80 metres away from our house.

'The land is surrounded by a sheep farm and there are two or three around at the moment. If a sheep was to fall down the hole then that would be the end of it. It would be the same for our two dogs. You wouldn't be able to get to them or even see them.'

Mr Hensby believes the collapse could be linked to 19th-century iron or lead mining in the area, though he has been unable to find evidence of a shaft that may have collapsed.

While lead mining started in the Pennines around 2,000 years ago, commercial operations didn't start until the mid-1800s and continued until the early 1900s, starting up again for a few years during the First World War.

Around this time the landscape was littered with chimneys and huge waterwheels that were used to sort useful ore from soil and other scrap, though only a few remain today.

The mines also produced zinc ore, iron ores, and fluorite also known as fluorspar, though the areas is less well-known for these.

Mr Hensby, who lives with partner Sam, an academic at Durham University, added: 'From time to to time small holes do open up on our land, but we have never known them to be so big before.

'Some council experts came to inspect the hole yesterday but we are not sure what can be done. We are crossing our fingers it doesn't get much bigger, but it is approaching a public footpath now.'

He added that he is working to increase the wild bird population on his land, and hopes that the sink hole will not have a negative impact. Daily Mail