TERRIFIED children had to be kept indoors yesterday after two beasts escaped from the auction mart near their school.

Renewed calls were later made for an alternative site to be found for Northallerton Auction Mart before anyone is seriously hurt.

The latest incident was the fourth time in 18 months that youngsters at Applegarth Primary School, in Northallerton, have had to cope with runaway animals from the mart.

It happened in mid-afternoon, just as the youngsters were preparing to leave school.

The two frightened animals charged across a car park, on to the High Street and on to East Road before they were caught.

"The children were extremely frightened, and so were their parents," said the school headteacher Al Procter.

"This has been taken up by the environmental health people before and the security was supposed to have been improved.

"It caused a great deal of consternation last time it happened and I'm really sad it has been allowed to happen again."

A spokesman for the education authority said: "We do not like anything that threatens the security of pupils, and we would like to see the mart moved to a new site.

"This is not the first time this has happened and we fear it will not be the last. To date, we have managed to avoid any serious threat of injury to pupils and parents, but that is not to say it won't happened in the future."

Auction mart secretary Peter Richardson said the two animals had slipped out as they were being loaded and had been quickly rounded up again.

"We do everything we can to prevent animals getting out," he said