VANDALS who chopped down young oak trees at a school have been branded "mindless thugs" by the head teacher.

Steve Isherwood, head of St Cuthbert's School, St Alban's Road, Darwen, was horrified to discover three 15-year-old oak trees had been felled during the half term holidays.

He was even more amazed to discover that the trees had been dragged 30 metres across the school playing field to be hidden among a cluster of other trees.

He said: "It is just wanton vandalism. Every school has to put up with a certain amount of trouble from people outside of the school, but this is ridiculous."

The head hopes that people living opposite the school may be able to identify the vandals who may have operated in darkness to "steal" the trees.

He said: "Darwen police are investigating this and hopefully someone will have seen something and can tell us who did this.

"These trees were deliberately left at the edge of the field when a housing development was built opposite school.

"They survived all the construction process and then someone goes and destroys them like this."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.