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Camden New Journal - by TOM FOOT
Published: 17 May 2007

Collapse fears shut play area

AN award-winning garden and popular play area for children in Bloomsbury has closed amid fears that it may collapse.
The Phoenix Garden, in Stacey Street, shut after a road flanking it caved in a fortnight ago. Kerbstones vanished into a gaping chasm in New Compton Street, revealing a series of derelict 18th-century wine cellars beneath.
Camden Council has hastily fixed the road and concreted in the cellars, but Alex Bray, chairman of the Phoenix Garden Association, fears a second collapse.
He said: “I was walking along New Compton Street and saw a six-foot hole. The kerbstones had just vanished into the ground. I rang the council but they said they could not come for three weeks – so I rang the police. Then the council came pretty quickly.
“They sent a digger, but work stopped after I pointed out to them that the road was actually cracking around them. It was just bizarre.”
He added: “It is extremely dangerous and we are expecting another collapse.”
Mr Bray said the council was checking the garden after craters appeared near a sandpit.
A council press official said: “The cellars under the road and footpath on New Compton Street have already been filled with concrete and the road and pavement put back to normal. The cellars under the garden aren’t actually the council’s responsibility but our parks team are helping the group sort it out anyway.”
The garden, a former World War II bombsite, is the only one of seven original Covent Garden community gardens to survive. It has won a Camden in Bloom prize for the past three years.

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