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The first indication the local man received of his situation was when a neighbor urgently banged on his door and told him his beloved Mini had plunged into a hole.

"I stepped outside expecting a small pothole under a wheel or something similar. But when I walked out to check it out, I understood, oh, that really is a significant cavity," he explained.

His automobile had dropped into a 10-foot wide gap, possibly created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has spent 25 days caught in a administrative "difficult situation" trying to determine how to retrieve his car.

The Main Issue: Unregistered Land

The hitch is that the property has no registered owner. The local council has stated it won't take down the barriers blocking off the sinkhole until land ownership had been established. "It's quite a difficult situation," said McKenzie, 36, a freelance designer. "There's bureaucracy at every turn."

McKenzie has resided in the area in Redruth for about a decade and in fact has a parking space next to his house, but it is too narrow to be practical so he started leaving his car outside a local bakery. He had checked with both the bakery and the local authority that he wouldn't get a parking fine.

"I had finally reached a point like I was getting somewhere, I had a dependable little car that was fuel-efficient and simple to keep on the road. It meant I could at last focus on trying to put money aside to take my daughter on her dream trip to Japan one day. She's always wanted to go."

The Event and Consequences

Then came that knock on the door on a Saturday in November. "The person next door was very alarmed. The police turned up and secured the area off. We all had to stay in the houses because we couldn't leave without going past the collapse. The highways people arrived, erected the fence up, and then they returned and put a second fence up surrounding it as well."

It is thought the hole may be an unlucky remnant of Pednandrea Mine, a disused copper and tin mine.

McKenzie thought he would be without his vehicle for a few days. But days have now become weeks.

A Potential Resolution

An end may be in sight. The authorities has stated it will work with McKenzie to – temporarily – remove the barriers to permit the Mini to be removed. He commented: "They have agreed to work with my insurance company's recovery team and try to arrange a date and an acceptable way of extracting it that doesn't put anybody at risk."

The vehicle has been badly damaged and is probably to be written off. "At least I can say my Mini met its end in a memorable way – not everyone can say their car was swallowed by the ground beneath them," McKenzie noted.

Council Statement

A representative from the local council said it sympathised with McKenzie. But it said: "This collapse did not happen on public property. We have made the area safe and informed the car owner that we will organize to lift the barrier to enable him to retrieve the car.

"Since no one owns the land, our barriers will remain in place until property ownership has been determined, and we will persist to monitor the surrounding area to ensure everyone's security."