HAVE you ever wanted the ground to swallow you up? If you live in Ripon, in the north of England, your wish might come true more often than you’d expect.
The Yorkshire town is something of a world capital for sinkholes. Sinkholes are caverns that form when circulating water dissolves rocks rich in carbonate or evaporites. Ripon is built over gypsum, which dissolves readily, and over the past 150 years more than 30 major sinkholes have appeared, often dragging buildings and gardens down into them. The sinkholes of Ripon are thought to have been Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for the passage…
