Staff spent a day repairing the havoc wreaked by vandals who rampaged through a Worthing cemetery.

The wreckers at Durrington Cemetery smashed and overturning 65 gravestones.

Stonemasons from HD Tribe Ltd in Broadwater Road, Worthing, reinstated 63 headstones free as a gesture of goodwill to the community.

They cemented and drilled the heavy stones back to their bases after bereaved relatives expressed their distress and disgust at the attack two weeks ago.

Masonry manager, Phil Read, said: "The gravestones were still all over the place when we got there on Tuesday.

"It was a very distressing site for people, especially for elderly visitors to the cemetery.

"It took four of us a day to repair them.

"One statue of an angel had its head knocked off, so it will take until after Easter to mend it.

"Another statue of a little boy was broken off at the legs.

"It's an awful thing for people to have done. It's not very common and it was a shock."

Ian Rudkin, Worthing Borough Council's crematorium and cemetery registrar, said the damage was an act of mindless vandalism.

He said: "How can people do this? I don't understand their mentality."

Cemetery staff were alerted to the desecration by a relative who thought the wind had blown over some of the memorials.

Mr Rudkin said: "I don't think it is children because some of the stones are very heavy and it would have taken somebody bigger than a child to knock it over.

"It was either adults or a gang."