Floodwaters have caused a Victorian wall to collapse, taking huge chunks of a road with it into a stream.

The 25m wall in West Street, Osney Island, Oxford, has been subsiding for years because of old age.

But city council engineers arrived just in time to stop the rest of the road being washed away by flood waters in the stream, a tributary of the Thames which runs round the west side of the island.

West Street will be closed for six weeks while emergency work to build foundations for a new wall is carried out.

And because laying the fundations of a new wall involve tearing up the road, re-building work may not be completed until next spring engineers have said. Andrew Burchett, technical support manager for the council works department, said: "The wall gave way. Big chunks of it and the road were falling into the river. Water which runs into the weir during the floods is very fast and it takes anything in its way with it.

"What's left of the wall is leaning over more and more by the minute. I think we got there just in time to be honest. We've known for year's it's been slipping. But the floods have made it critical and we must act now."

City council engineers are consulting the Environment Agency and aim to build a wall with much deeper foundations than the original Victorian wall. While the new wall will be firmer and give greater protection from future floods, parts of the road could crumble into the river in future years, engineers fear.