Farmer in hole world of trouble

11:44am Wednesday 21st May 2008

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A GIANT hole opened up beneath this Land Rover as it was crossing a field of long grass on a farm.

David Ford, of Ilsington Farm, Tincleton, near Dorchester, said his 34-year-old son, Lee, had driven out at night to look for some cows.

Mr Ford said: "Lee had gone out to search for some cattle which had been let out into mowing grass when someone left a gate open.

"He could have been killed because he was going along and he suddenly went into a swallow hole.

"We have had several on the farm before but Lee couldn't see this one because of the grass and because it was at night. He would not have been there at all if the cattle had not been let out.

"We'll put a tractor on the Land Rover and pull it out.

"These swallow holes happen when water washes away the ground. It drops just like an hourglass until the ground goes in one big hit."

Dorset County Council earth science manager Richard Edmonds said that swallow holes were common in Dorset which has thousands of them.

He added: "This man was certainly on the right kind of geology for this to happen.

"He was on chalk which is a soft white limestone and basically what can happen is that the chalk gets deeply weathered over millions of years and rain falls and creates what is called a solution pipe.

"These are often filled with gravel and typically a reddish type of clay and this can subside and cause a hole."

He added that Dorset has numerous similar sites all over the county with one of the best examples being in Wareham Forest.