RADCLIFFE Town Council launched a £2,000 scheme to reduce the danger at the Delph in Ainsworth.

The flooded former quarry, in Bury Old Road, had been called a “potential death trap” for years by villagers.

They had been proved right 12 years earlier when a young girl fell over the three-and-a-half feet high stone wall into the quarry and drowned in the deep water. Other children had fallen in since, but they had been able to swim to safety.

The old quarry had been abandoned years earlier when the quarrymen lost their fight with the water seeping in and flooding their works.

The council had been attempting to fill up the Delph by tipping, but it was a very large quarry and only certain types of refuse could be deposited there. But a scheme had finally been arranged with the National Coal Board to tip colliery waste and to create a bank alongside the wall.

As part of the agreement, the council had to pay the additional transport costs to divert the loads to Ainsworth.

It was estimated that 8,000 tons of colliery waste would need to be put in the Delph to create a bank alongside the wall.

Much more waste would have been needed if the broken up gravestones from St Thomas’ Church had not already been placed there.