A pony wandered into Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital and walked through the corridors after escaping from a nearby field.

Staff and patients were left astonished when the black-coated animal, named Beauty, was discovered inside the hospital yesterday afternoon.

Police managed to coax the pony into a courtyard with apples before officers from the RSPCA were summoned to the hospital in Apley.

Eyewitness Lorna Rutter, of Little Dawley, Telford, said: “I was entering the hospital via the day unit entrance and was going for an X-ray with my husband and there was this horse on the grass by the car park.

“A security guard and another man were in pursuit of the horse and they looked like they had got it under control.

“Everyone was watching.”

She added: “I went up the corridor to the X-ray department and about 20 minutes later I came out and my husband said a porter had said a horse had just been down the corridor.”

Marlene Harris, the pony’s owner, of Wellington, said: “Police said he had come through a little gap in the field and then went straight into the hospital through the doors and through another set of doors.

“They got him out with apples.”

Yesterday she helped to return the animal back to its field with RSPCA inspector Dave McCartney and two police officers, before it was taken to a livery until the field could be secured.

Constable Paul Chadwick, of West Mercia Police, said officers were initially alerted at about 2.30pm and added: “We then got a call from the hospital at 3.10pm to say the horse had got inside the building.

“It was moved into the garden of the hospital because people were getting quite stressed.”

Judith Haw, spokeswoman for the RSPCA, said the pony had escaped from a field near to the hospital.

She added: “The pony was contained and the owner was at the scene.

“Our inspector advised the owner that the field, fencing and stabling were not secure and so she would have to put the pony into livery until the field could be secured and she agreed.”

A spokesman for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust said: “A horse entered the grounds of the Princess Royal Hospital at about 2.30pm.

“It was quickly moved into a secure area and the RSPCA was informed.”