Into the Walton Street voids

​Walton Street is to be closed for even longer than anticipated after one of the contractor’s vehicles sank through the surface on the afternoon of Thursday August 29. It was eventually lifted out with the help of the Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service

The contractor had previously used ground-penetrating radar to try to identify all the underground voids, or sink holes, along the street, but it seems to have missed a few. Several holes had started to appear before the vehicle (a ‘planing machine’) sank into a void that measured around one cubic metre.

The contractor Skanska is going to open up this particular void and chase it back to see if there are any more, and then reconstruct the road to make it safe. That will involve keeping Walton Street, which should have reopened this weekend, closed for another few weeks.

County Councillor Susanna Pressel says: “It is, of course, embarrassing for the County Council to have failed to plan properly for the sink holes. Well before they started the work, I had forwarded a warning from a Walton Street resident to remind them of the regular past problems we have had, with holes opening up. It is interesting that the original level of the road was the same as the level of the lower footpath on the west side of the road along the Worcester College wall. That may explain why we have been getting sink holes. Council officers also suspect that an undetected Thames Water underground leak may have been hollowing out a space for years, but Thames Water denies this.”

Walton Street will therefore now be closed during St Giles Fair when it is usually the traffic diversion route. Between September 8 and 11, most traffic that would have gone along St Giles or Walton Street will have to take a very circuitous route via St Margaret’s Rd, Banbury Rd, Marston Ferry Rd, Marston Rd, St Clements, The Plain, Iffley Rd, Donnington Bridge, Abingdon Rd and Oxpens Rd (see below). However buses and taxis will will still be able to use the planned St Giles Fair diversion route via Parks Rd, Broad St and George St, as in previous years.