The Coal Hill Lane Torrent, July 2025 “Not your normal Sunday”

Around 4.30 pm on Sunday 20th July 2025, the sink hole that had already erupted across Coal Hill Lane, next to the right hand corner wall, finally erupted with a huge volume of water (please see video link below):

The water fountain was accompanied by lumps of the asphalt road covering flying seven foot into the air, as there had been cracking noises coming from underneath the road surface for the previous 15 minutes.

Two hours earlier, the other carriageway (downhill) had also erupted but with a less vocal manner, but possibly in a more dangerous as the broken road surface was obscured by a fast flowing foot deep wave of water.

For the same two hours we had established an unofficial, (but very effective) traffic control system utilising our charity trust cones to close off the downhill carriageway , and we were directing traffic one way on the uphill carriageway in a very heavy rainstorm.

Seeing the fracture lines in the road, widening as every bus went over them was quite sobering (if we had needed any assistance to be sober).

As the sounds of the fractures increased we closed down Coal Hill Lane, prior to a very welcome Leeds Council emergency services arrival enabled us to replace our Rehoboth cones with shiny new red and white ones. This meant we could move our trusty cones safely back to the Rehoboth, a Yorkshire Water person also arrived to assess the situation.

Our “mission control” staff, in two locations, had over the course of the afternoon informed and liaised with the authorities and Yorkshire Water over the seriousness of the rapidly deteriorating situation, which frankly was dangerous to vehicles and passengers.

This work was not on our action list for Sunday, although our new drainage paths, external drains that had cleared earlier in the week and Stan’s drainage pipes from 2023 meant there was no flooding or flood damage to the Rehoboth, and we finished the day with a very full rainwater butt.

 Coal Hill Lane was closed, in total, for 11 days, opening again on the morning of Friday 1st August, when the repairs were complete.