Thefts from Berry Pomeroy Castle, a protected site in Devon

This article was first published by Devon & Cornwall police.

Officers are trying to identify a group of people in connection with a nighthawking incident in Totnes, Devon.

It is believed that on Sunday 28 January, around six people went onto a protected site at Berry Pomeroy Castle with a metal detector and may have removed artefacts while causing damage to the surrounding area.

Win Scutt, Senior Properties Curator at English Heritage said: “Staff arriving on Sunday morning found a large number of holes dug into the site, along with scattered rubbish. Damage caused to the archaeology of scheduled monuments by unauthorised use of metal detectors is taken seriously by the law and by the police, who are appealing for information.

“The damage caused by unskilled digging of holes on a nationally important site like this is irreversible. We shall never know how much knowledge has been lost about the history of Berry Pomeroy Castle due to this disturbance of the buried archaeology.”