A SCHOOLGIRL was devastated to find a memorial to her grandfather had been stolen by heartless thieves – for the second time.

The family of Thomas Foster scattered his ashes in Blackpool, where he ran a guest house, after he died three days after Christmas 2006, aged 68.

They also set up a planter in memory of him in a cemetery in Ushaw Moor, near Durham, where he grew up and lived in his younger days.

Within weeks, the planter was stolen and its contents were strewn across the cemetery, but the family, now living in High Grange, Darlington, replaced the ornament.

But when his 69-year-old widow, Jeanette, daughter Lorraine Foster-Bates and granddaughter Ellie returned to the cemetery recently they were shocked to find the van dalism had been repeated.

The pot was gone and the plants were, again, thoughtlessly emptied across other people’s graves.

Ellie, 11, was the first to see what had happened.

Her mother, 48, said: “When we reach the cemetery, she always says, ‘We’re here grandy’. I couldn’t believe what had happened. It made me sick. This is a final resting place.

“Ellie spent a lot of time with my dad. She wrote a beautiful poem when he died.

“She takes it very personally.

She thinks they’re doing it to her granddad.”

The memorial to Mr Foster, a former miner, was placed on the grave of his grandmother, Jessie Foster, who is buried at the cemetery.

Mr Foster was close to his grandmother before her death in 1952 and often visited her grave. The planter was a temporary tribute, until a marble headstone, bearing the details of Mr Foster and his grandmother, can be completed.

Mrs Foster-Bates said: “If people want the money, I would rather they ask me for it. It only cost £20.

“It’s not nice to think this is the society we live in. There are also children’s graves in that cemetery. It’s mindless and horrible.”

Mr Foster led a colourful life, originally as a miner at Bearpark Colliery, then working for Pilkington Glass in St Helen’s, Lancashire, before becoming a hotelier in Blackpool and finally running a restaurant in Benidorm, Spain.