A PARK designed to resemble the Battle of Worcester has had part of its impressive display blunted in the name of health and safety.

Power Park, off Broomhall Way, was revamped in 2011 after St Peter’s Parish Council received a £50,000 playbuilder grant to expand and develop the area into a super playground for eight to 13-year-olds.

However, the death knell was sounded for a row of eye-catching Civil War pikes when Worcester City Council’s parks department gave the poles their marching orders.

Bill Meadows, of Begonia Close, St Peter’s, photographed the wooden structures after they were cut down and questioned why the work was carried out on the ornamental pieces.

“They have left the sawn-off ends in a dangerous condition – sharp splinter edges to catch unwary children,” he said.

Councillor Roger Knight said the structures did not need to be cut down and were part of the design partially formed by children at Cherry Orchard Primary School.

“I am disappointed that they had to be cut down to two feet in height when they were quite splendid and built to resemble the pikemen of the Battle of Worcester in 1651,” he said.

A Worcester City Council spokesman confirmed that the spikes had been cut down by the parks team as a health and safety issue.

“Children and young people were getting onto these spikes and pulling them down,” he said.

“Some of them were being snapped off. A health and safety investigator thought it was not appropriate and that they should be made safe.”

He said the work was carried out at no cost to the council as the contractor undertook it as a favour to landscape designer Charles Potterton, who planned the park when the work was carried out.

The park was among eight green spaces across the city to win special protected status to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee after it was granted recognition under the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge.

The aim of the competition was to create a national network of protected sites to pay tribute to Her Majesty.