Tesco tunnel collapse, Packhorse Road, Gerrards Cross, UK

Tesco Tunnel
Gerrards Cross
2004-2010

Update February, 2010.
2009 was a busy year and 2010 has started in the same way.
A new link to the story of the creation of the west portal has been added at the bottom of this page.
Tesco's own site is at www.tescogerrardscross.co.uk/
If you would like to go back to my home page, which covers topics other than this one, just click here.

What started as a novel project to build a Tesco store over a railway cutting in Gerrards Cross by creating a tunnel, turned into a dramatic event when the tunnel collapsed on June 30, 2005. This page serves as Home for a number of other pages built over quite a long period of time.

There is an account of the work preceding the collapse, recorded to display railway activities and construction work from 1999 to 2005 with a few flashbacks to an earlier age.

Then there is the account of the collapse itself and the aftermath.

In March 2006, it was announced by Tesco that Costain would take over the civil engineering project from Jacksons and would first conduct an investigation into the engineering aspects affecting the decision as to what should be done at the site. This investigation is not a very visible process but nevertheless merits photographic recording because of what may come next. This page is likely to change frequently until more definite plans are announced.

Much was happening in 2008. This page, added in October, gives an account of some of those activities.

After a lot of preparatory work in 2008 and 2009, a large crawler crane was brought in and the gap created by the collapse was filled with new segments.

Meanwhile the handsome west portal has been constructed.