REAL-LIFE grinches chopped down and stole 25 huge Christmas trees which a smallholder had been growing for a decade.

Pensioner Oscar Pickess discovered the theft when he walked to the field, about 100 yards from his home, and found only the stumps of his Norway Spruce trees were left.

Oscar, 69, has been growing and selling his Christmas trees for more than 30 years – and donates one every year to his local church. However, in the dead of night, thieves armed with saws sneaked on to the land and spent hours chopping them and driving them away.

Mr Pickess, who is also village tree warden, said: “I went down there and saw the trees had gone.

“I have lost some from the side of the road before, but not from down in the field.

“Somebody knew where they were going.”

Mr Pickess always donates a tree to St Peter and St Thomas’s Church in Stambourne.

The stolen trees, which were up to 14ft tall, had been growing for the past ten years on Mr Pickess’s smallholding in Cornish Hall End Road, Stambourne, near Halstead.

It is believed a pick-up truck was used to move all the trees.

The thieves may have escaped along tracks on neighbouring farms.

It happened overnight on December 5 and police are keen to hear from anyone with information on 101. Mr Pickess said: “It guts you a bit, this sort of thing, but you have got your health, so you just have to bounce back up from it.”