Large willow tree splits and collapses across pavement in Grove Park

“I heard this sound like rubble falling”

Photographs and videos by Seaane Chin-Hoyte

A large willow tree has split in half and collapsed into a front garden in Grove Park.

The tree, in St Thomas Road, is near a primary school and an eyewitness told The Chiswick Calendar the heavy section, which fell across the pavement, came down only 20 minutes after the nursery children at Grove Park Primary School were collected from the morning session at 12.00pm.

“I live opposite. I was making some video content for my hairdressing business, and I heard this sound like rubble falling”, Seaane Chin-Hoyte told us.

“I looked out and saw the willow was covering the lady’s house opposite. Thank goodness no one was hurt and no property was damaged”.

Tree had been reported to the Council by neighbour who was worried about it

Seaane called the police to ask them who to call as she thought more of the tree might fall. They advised her to speak to the Fire Brigade, who came and cordoned it off. A tree surgeon then came and cut it, Seaane told us, and Hounslow Highways came with a shredder and cleared the path, leaving the main bit of the trunk to deal with later.

“To give you some background, the lady opposite has called the council so many times to try and get them to do something about it because you could see there were loads of mushrooms on it and wasps nesting in it and there was clearly something wrong with it”.

Tim Hurley, Service Director at Hounslow Highways, told the Chiswick Area Forum meeting on Wednesday evening the way to report trees which are problematic is to report them on Fix My Street. He promised his team would get to them.

They often leave big stumps because the priority is to make a fallen or damaged tree safe and then come back later to grind down the stump.