An antique dealer has been left "devastated" after heartless thieves stole around £1,300 of silver.
Kathleen Ingham discovered a range of Georgian and Victorian silverware were stolen from a cabinet at Corbridge Antiques Centre, in Corbridge, Northumberland, on Sunday afternoon.
Kathleen is contacting auction houses to keep an eye out for the missing items and is appealing for anyone who may have saw anything suspicious to get in touch with the police.
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Kathleen said: "I'm absolutely devastated as most of the silver was Georgian and Victorian and quite valuable. I discovered the break-in when I went to re-stock the cabinet on Sunday, March 5 at around 3.30pm.
"The lock had been broken off and the whole top shelf of silver had been stolen along with some vintage silver from another shelf.
"Another antique dealer managing the centre that day hadn't realised the theft and was obviously very shocked too, she had noticed that the silver was not there at around 1pm, but thought I must have just had a run of sales the previous week.
"She was very apologetic and helped with providing packaging etc so that I could remove the rest of the items from the cabinet. I am in the process of contacting auction houses in and out of the area to ask them to keep an eye out for the stolen silver, hopefully I will be able to recover it, but I very much doubt it."
A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: “Shortly after 6pm on Sunday (March 5) police received a report of theft from a premises on Main Street in Corbridge.
“It was reported that antique silver items had been taken from a cabinet inside of the property sometime between 10am on Saturday (March 4) and 3pm on Sunday (March 5).
“Enquiries are ongoing and anyone with information should contact police using the ‘Tell Us Something’ page of our website or by calling 101 quoting crime reference number 028143T/23.”
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