THIEVES that ran off with Ashbourne’s market stalls last week were after the £6,000 trailers they were loaded on to, district council bosses assume.
Traders were left with no choice but to improvise using trestle tables and tarpaulin after all the wooden stalls used weekly on Ashbourne’s cobbled market square were stolen hours before they were due to be put out.
The thieves, who struck in the early hours of Thursday last week, also made off with tools used to keep Ashbourne’s Mayfield Road cemetery neat and tidy, including a leaf-blower and a strimmer.
A spokesman for the Derbyshire Dales District Council remarked on the tiny “window of opportunity” the raiders had to break into the Mayfield depot — where the trailers were stored — and tow them away.
He said: “There would have been a very narrow window of opportunity for them to get away with the trailers because they were last checked at 4am and then they were missing when our staff went to get them ready for the Thursday market at around 5.10am.
“We believe it’s probably the trailers themselves the thieves were interested in and that the market stall parts were driven away because they just happened to be loaded at the time. The trailers new cost about £6,000 each.” Police investigating the thefts were contacted on Thursday morning by the residents of a nearby farm, off the A515 in Darley Moor, as one of the trailers had been dumped there and was blocking a private driveway.
Authority bosses think this is because of the way the trailer was loaded.
The spokesman said: “The recovered trailer may well have been dumped as it was heavily loaded for the short trip to the market place — safe for our operatives but not for anyone trying to tow it at more than 30mph on a main road.” The News Telegraph has also learned that the depot building on the Mayfield Road site might be have been damaged beyond repair in the attack, which saw the miscreants break through a locked gate before smashing their way into the building.
