COMMUNITY volunteers in Stacksteads were today picking up the pieces after vandals smashed up a stone table in a park where thousands of pounds have been spent on improvements.

Rosemount Community Park, at the top of Huttock End Lane, recently received a grant of £5,500 from the British Conservation Trust Volunteers to extend the path through it.

Volunteer Frances Whitehead has helped raise £19,000 for improvements during the past 12 years.

But she now faces having to raise even more money to repair and replace the table.

She said: "It is really upsetting after all the hard work we've put in. We had wooden tables there before but they were vandalised so we got some stone ones put up instead.

"Now I am going to have to look into repairing it but it will mean finding more money because the funding from BCTV is for work on the path.

"It's annoying because I had just raised enough money to buy a diesel strimmer like the council use to keep the park in check."

Frances, who lives in Haslingden, has organised the planting of 1,500 trees in the park, the creation of a pond, bridge and steps with a handrail.

She said: "Coun Michael McShea came to me about 13 years ago when I worked at the youth centre and the park was an absolute dump. There was lots of rubbish there and it just needed brightening up."

Kay Barcroft, 44, is a member of the Stacksteads Riverside Group which has been involved in improving the park.

She discovered the vandalism when she was out walking last week.

She said: "I couldn't put into words how I felt. You just feel angry and sad. The table had four stone pillar legs and a big flat stone top.

"Someone had smashed one of the legs and the top collapsed. We found a piece of one of the legs in the pond. The table is near some houses but it is in a dip and you can't see it from the road so no-one's seen anything."

"Frances does all the fund-raising but I have been part of the digging out and cleaning up as a member of the Stacksteads Riverside Park Group."