Massive sinkhole dooms beloved club as building set to be razed in demolition

A beloved local social club will be demolished two years after a massive sinkhole tore apart the ground under it.

The Cwmfelin Social Club and its car park in Swansea sustained extensive damage after parts of the ground collapsed outside back in August 2023.

Thirty-two feet below the club lies a collapsed tunnel that carried a stream, also known as a culvert, a sewer and the remains of an old tramline that once served the local steelworks.

Welsh Water said the collapsed culvert damaged the main trunk sewer, which required it to rig up a temporary sewer system running from the grounds of the nearby Libanus Chapel site, along the pavement of Carmarthen Road and underneath the railway bridge, and then eastwards to a main sewer connection point.

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It was initially hoped that the club would only need to be closed for a few weeks whilst safety works were being carried out, but now 23 months later, there has almost no visible progress to rectify the issue.

However, club secretary Mike Kennedy told WalesOnline that light finally appears to be at the end of the tunnel.

He said: "We have some headway, we are negotiating now on a start date, which I will know by the end of the week. All of that is going to be thrashed out with a legal team.

"The work will be in three sections. The first phase will see the sinkhole by the side of the club filled in to enable machinery to come in to knock the club down.

"The second phase will be to knock the club down with nothing left standing. Previously we were thinking of perhaps not knocking some of it down, but it all has to come down now.

"The third phase will see Welsh Water have their own contractors who will go in and excavate it all and repair the sewer. At this moment, the sewer and the culvert is being redirected down Carmarthen Road.

"As the culvert is ours, we own it and it is our responsibility, we will then go behind with our team and repair the culvert, making good the whole site.

"That in theory has been agreed to, we're just waiting for contracts and costings. We are a long way along from where we were previously. It will be two years coming on August 29 since it happened. I'd like to think in August we will be doing the first phase."

Discussing whether there could be any hope of rebuilding a social club in the spot it once stood when works are complete, Mr Kennedy said he was optimistic, but that it all depends on the money left once repairs are carried out.

He said: "At this stage, it all depends on costings. I'll have the costings before they start doing any work for the demolition, and I'll have a guy who is going to give me costings for the latter part repairing the culvert. At this stage it is difficult to price because they have got all the drawings and footage from drones, but we're told until they actually get down there, you don't really know what you're going to be up against.

"It's a huge, huge project. The money, then, is slipping away, and it all depends what we've got left to push forward. We're optimistic that we can put a smaller club on the site, but at this stage, it feels really premature to project any figures."

A Welsh Water spokeswoman said: “Following damage caused to our sewer by the sink hole at Cwmfelin Social Club, we have been exploring options to restore the sewer network in that area, which is very complex due to ground conditions around the sink hole and the nearby railway line.

“We are continuing discussions with third-party landowners and expect to have a plan for next steps in the coming months."