A PIECE of North Yorkshire's industrial heritage was buried under concrete in a council blunder.

North Yorkshire County Council employees working on a new footpath in Norby Front Street, Thirsk, covered the top of the old mill race with concrete.

The race used to provide a current of water to drive the town's mill. The mill was demolished in 1957.

Thirsk's mayor, Councillor Jan Marshall, told town councillors of the mistake at a meeting on Thursday.

She said: "This is the top of mill race, 300 years worth of industrial heritage, and they have covered it with concrete.

"We have just put up boards which say people can look at the last remnants of the top of the mill race.

"They should have respected that and not interfered with it at all.

"I am not happy at all. I have been spending the past three years trying to recover the heritage of Thirsk for people to understand what they are looking at."

The county council's area highways manager, Eddy Hayward, said the new footpath was part of a traffic-calming scheme.

"There has always been a speeding issue at that location," he said.

"We were asked to provide a footway and we have taken part of the carriageway to do that.

"What we haven't appreciated at the time is that the big blocks that were there formed part of the old mill race. Originally, we had planned to take these blocks out and replace them with a back edge of the footway.

"When we started excavation, we realised there was no way we could do that.

"We have got engineers looking at trying to reinstate the mill race back it to its former position.

"We are also going to work with the town council because we don't want to do anything that is not satisfactory to them."

The footpath had been due to be completed early next week but the project has now been delayed.