4 days ago
23
The first Malcolm McKenzie knew of his problem was when a neighbour banged on his door and told him his beloved Mini had fallen into a hole.
“I went out expecting a small pothole under a wheel or something. But when I went out to take a look, I realised, oh, that really is a proper hole,” he said.
His car had plunged into a 3-metre wide opening, possibly created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has spent 25 days caught in a bureaucratic “nightmare” trying to work out how to extricate his vehicle.
The hitch is that the land isn’t registered to anyone. Cornwall council has said it can’t remove the barriers cordoning off the hole until land ownership had been established. “It’s a bit of a nightmare,” said McKenzie, 36, a self-employed designer. “It’s red tape everywhere.”
McKenzie has lived in the area in Redruth for about 10 years and actually has a parking space beside his house, but it is too narrow to be useful so he began parking outside a nearby bakery. He checked with the bakery and the council that he wouldn’t get a ticket.
He is a car enthusiast and spent a year saving for his Mini and doing it up. Its rusty bonnet is a deliberate style choice – he wanted the “rat rod” look. The car passed its MOT in October, with the mechanic telling him it was the nicest Mini he had ever had on his ramp.
McKenzie said: “I’d finally felt like I was getting somewhere, I had a reliable little car that was economical and easy to keep on the road. It meant I could finally focus on trying to save up to take my daughter on her dream trip to Japan one day. She’s always wanted to go.”
Then came that knock on the door on Saturday 1 November. “My neighbour was quite panicked. The police turned up and closed the area off. We all had to stay in the houses because we can’t get out without going past the hole. The highways people came out, put the fence up, and then they came out and put a second fence up around it as well.”
It is believed the hole may be an unfortunate legacy of Pednandrea Mine, a disused copper and tin mine.
McKenzie thought he would be without his car for a few days. But days have now turned into weeks.
An end may be in sight. The council has said it will work with McKenzie to – briefly – lift the barriers to allow the car to be removed. He said: “They are willing to work with my insurance company’s recovery team and try to arrange a date and an acceptable way of getting it out that doesn’t put anybody at risk.”
The car has been badly damaged and is likely to be written off. “At least I can say my Mini went out in style – not everyone can claim their car was eaten by the Earth itself,” McKenzie said.
A spokesperson from Cornwall council said it sympathised with McKenzie. But it said: “This collapse did not occur on council land. We have made the area safe and advised the car owner that we will arrange to lift the barrier to enable him to recover the vehicle.
“As the land is unregistered, our barriers will remain in place until land ownership has been determined, and we will continue to monitor the surrounding area to ensure public safety.”
