PENSIONER Jack Aston, 84, has been battling cancer for two years but now has another fight on his hands – taking on the wild boar that have decimated his garden near Brierley.

"They managed to get through the fence at the end of the garden, and have now ripped up all the lawns right across from the house to the boundary," he told the Review.

"It really is heartbreaking. After 33 years of bringing this place into some sort of order, it looks like a battlefield.

"I've had to put in some corrugated iron sheets over the holes they have made in the wire fence. They've ripped up three decades of work in as many nights. The boar have torn deep ruts across all the lawns, reducing them to just sods of earth."

Mr Aston said he was not well enough to repair damage on this sort of scale.

He added: "I had hoped that this would be used by my great grandchildren – but the sheer scale of the mess is dreadful.

"People deserve to be able to live without this sort of thing happening. It's all very well people wanting to support the boar, but really we can't have double standards: if they want a return to a medieval land, then perhaps they should give up their modern inventions like mobile phones and televisions."

Mr Aston has other battles on his hands over the state of the Forestry track to his home and his electricity supply.

"I am hoping to enlist the help of MP Mark Harper. I just hope he can see a way of getting the Forestry and the electricity board to realise that everyone deserves to be able to live their lives as normally as possible – even out here in the woods."