Mystery as Craven Arms market signs removed

Signs put up directing drivers to a south Shropshire market have mysteriously gone missing.

Andra Tongue, who runs a charity stall at the weekly Saturday indoor market at Craven Arms Methodist Church, said she initially thought the signs had been stolen.

But residents told her they saw men in a van marked "incident support unit" taking them.

Mrs Tongue, from Aston-on-Clun, said it was a blow for organisers of the market on one of the busiest days of the year.

She said: "A woman said that something that looked like an ambulance, with incident support unit written on it, picked up the signs on Easter Saturday.

"I would have thought that if it was an official person taking it away they would have at least told us or had the decency to have asked us to remove it first.

"I asked the Highways Agency but they haven't admitted it. Whoever it was, we want the signs back."

The Saturday market, which has been running for more than a decade, features nine profit-making stalls, but Mrs Tongue runs a table-top sale which raises about £1,200 each year for charities including Midlands Air Ambulance and animal rescue centres.

The two wooden signs were at the junction of Corvedale Road and the A49 when they were taken at about noon on Saturday.