A FIRE at Ditchford Bank Farm between Bentley, near Redditch, and Hanbury, caused the death of nearly 100 pigs on Saturday.

The farmer, Mr R Granger, said he knew nothing of the blaze until wakened by a man and a woman who had apparently seen the glow in the sky.

The brigade was called, and when he arrived in the farmyard he saw the man and woman releasing pigs in a building near the 80ft long pig pen that was already blazing fiercely alongside the Dutch barn. 120 tonnes of hay and straw had been lost, he said, and he estimated that out of about 100 pigs in the one pen, only two had been rescued.

"But if those two people had not worked so promptly to release the animals in the other building, the loss would have been worse. I only hope they can be traced so I may thank them properly," he said.