WORKMEN hauled a dead horse from a Fenland river after Middle Level Commissioners were alerted by one of our readers.

Gillian Youlton of Manea spotted the body of the horse floating in the river near Chatteris where the Forty Foot meets the Sixteen Foot.

Mrs Youlton said she had called the RSPCA, environmental health and the Middle Level Commissioners last week to try and get the animal removed.

Today a Middle Level spokesman authorised a contractor to remove the horse from the river.

The spokesman said such discoveries in the 180 kilometres of waterways controlled by the Middle Level were “very infrequent”. They had not received any reports from an owner of a horse having gone missing.

Mrs Youlton said several of her friends had also reported seeing the horse in the river and yet no one seemed willing to take action sooner.

She said nobody had taken responsibility and removed it from the river, describing it as “terrible” and saying that it “absolutely stinks”.

“On Friday a friend told me Middle Level was going to remove it. It is still there now,” she said on Monday.

“It’s awful that the horse has been left there to rot away. It’s contaminating the river and the water is used to irrigate crops in the fields nearby. It is not safe to leave it there.”

Mrs Youlton said tonight she felt the horse had only been removed following pressure from this paper.

“I think it was because of your intervention why the horse was removed,” she said. “I was told it would have been removed Friday but it wasn’t so thank you for your help.”