ONE of the area's popular beauty spots has been blighted this week after a lorry-load of commercial waste was illegally dumped on a roadside near Denham Bridge near Buckland Monachorum.

An assortment of old, unwanted fridges, freezers and drink storage units — 20 altogether — were found abandoned at the entrance of Great Northwood by the Buckland Abbey estate on Friday morning.

Sally Whitfield, head of the Buckland Abbey estate, said: 'These are not normal household fridges and freezers but large, commercial ones and its obvious that someone has gone out of their way and been paid to dump them.

'Why they want to pick such a lovely spot is beyond me. If they were going to dump it they could have picked an area outside a council tip.

'This is an area where children play and even pitch their tents. The doors are still on these fridges and if a little child climbed into one they could be trapped.

'The Bere Alston road is a busy road so somebody must have seen the lorry parked there.'

Miss Whitfield has contacted Tavistock police, West Devon Borough Council and the Environment Agency.

The site is not on the Buckland estate, however, she added that with the prospect of a large bill legally to dispose of the fridges, it will 'be a patch of land that nobody will now want to claim'.

A spokesman for West Devon Borough Council said the matter had been reported to the Environment Agency which was investigating the incident.

'We work in partnership with the Environment Agency to investigate bulk fly tips in West Devon, to clear fly tips from public land and to advise landowners of their legal responsibility to clear fly tips from private land,' he said.

'It's always very disappointing to see instances of fly tipping in our borough, especially the larger instances which are costly for the tax payer or land owner to clear. However, we're lucky in West Devon that residents are vigilant about reporting instances.'

The spokesman added: 'Although this instance contains a number of refrigerators, fly tipping of fridges has not increased disproportionately to other materials in recent months.

'Unfortunately, our officers see a variety of materials when they investigate fly tips. We would be grateful if anyone with any information that might help us to identify fly tippers would contact us on 01822 813600.'

Some 150 fridges and freezers have been dumped in one area of Lifton over the past year, said the borough council.