AN overnight storm has forced the emergency closure of one of Wellington’s most historic town centre thoroughfares.

Cornhill, which runs behind the town’s Wetherspoon’s Iron Duke public house and connects Fore Street and North Street, was closed early today by Somerset County Council highways staff after parts of a building started to collapse.

The debris came from the upper floors of 3 Fore Street, above an empty shop which used to house the Children’s Hospice South West charity store.

Fears seem to be centred on the condition of a first-floor bay window, parts of which could be seen dangling from the building.

Highways staff initially tried to close the whole of the pedestrianised street but after protests from Manny’s Barbershop owner Tamsin Fuller and Sharon Davis, of florists Interiors and Flowers, they relaxed the measures and closed only the covered alleyway under the building.

Ms Fuller said the first she knew of the issue was when ‘someone turned up this morning trying to tell our clients they could not come up here at all’.

She said: “They have not told us anything, we have not had any information at all.

“They just said it was because of the lane being unsafe at the top, which is what we have been saying for years.

“The trouble is the highways people do not give any thought to businesses at all.”

Ms Fuller said it was frustrating for businesses in Cornhill that the lane had suffered repeated closures in the past few years for a nearby housing development and installation of utilities and it had only properly reopened shortly after Christmas.

The building at the centre of the issue is believed to be owned by a company based in The Emirates and managed by a London agent.

The county council’s highways department has been asked by the Wellington Weekly to comment on the matter and any actions being taken to make the property safe.

Despite the closure of the lane, the Wellington Weekly today witnessed pedestrians walking past the warning signs and pushing aside the plastic barriers which had been placed across it.

Cornhill is one of Wellington’s oldest trading streets and after years of neglect it has been redeveloped as part of a LiveWest project to deliver 42 low-cost homes on land which stretches behind Fore Street as far as North Street car park.

To respect the heritage of the neighbourhood many of the row of Cornhill frontages have retained some traditional shop front features such as beams and unusual window shapes.

Recently, Wellington Town Council recovered a Victorian lantern which it wants to restore and hang back in place above the alleyway which has just been closed. The lantern was removed in 2018 because of fears it was loose and could fall on passers-by.