A CAR plummeted 40ft down a cliff and crashed into a house on the Harleyford Estate on Wednesday.

It is believed the female driver had parked the blue BMW at a post box on the estate, located off Henley Road, when it began to roll towards the edge of the cliff Witnesses say the woman was seen running after the car in an effort to catch up with it, but she fell and hurt her head.

The car rolled over the edge of the chalk cliff and plunged 40ft onto an empty cottage below at around 2.45pm.

Clive Feakin, 47, and Andrew Burns, 29, were the first on the scene of the accident after hearing the almighty crash from their Delta Scheme IT consultants offices based on the estate.

Mr Feakin, practice manager, said: "I heard it from inside my office. We heard a very loud crashing noise. We thought it was probably a tree coming down, being on the estate, that may have fallen onto a building.

After we heard it we went outside to investigate. But when we searched around we couldn't see anything. Then Andrew saw something through the cottage window and saw the car on its roof. We went round the back to investigate. We couldn't find anybody in the car, fortunately. We did a further search all around the car, underneath it and outside the house in case someone was injured nearby, but within a few minutes we were fairly sure there wasn't a casualty.

"We heard a couple of minutes later that a woman had been running after the car and had fallen over and concussed herself. The house was empty, but there are people living in the one next door."

Two fire crews and police were at the scene.

John Bull, Beaconsfield station manager, said: "It was a very unusual incident. The car rolled over the edge of a chalk cliff and dropped about 40ft and the back of the car went through the rear wall of a two storey house that was being renovated.

"We made the car safe. The task will now be the removal of the car and we have left it with the Harleyford Estate insurance company to deal with that.

"It would have been quite a different job if there had been someone inside either the car or the house."

The Harleyford Estate declined to comment.