A crane which sat upside down in a Shropshire field for the past 12 months has been removed by a five-man team in a nine-hour operation.

Two cranes from Birmingham and Nottingham were on site at Stokesay Castle near Craven Arms yesterday.

The crane had overturned, falling down an embankment on an unclassified road behind the castle on January 26 last year.

It was finally moved yesterday in a joint operation between Hewden and John Taylor Crane Services.

Michael Kane, from Hewden, said: “It all went 100 per cent absolutely according to plan. It took about nine hours.

“We put it back on its wheels, on to the low loader and removed it from the site.”

The crane was driven over metal tracks on the ground to help spread the weight.

They arrived on the site at about 8am and were finished by around 5pm.

Harold Marsh, the farmer who owns the land where the crane was stranded, said he was glad it had finally been moved as it had become “a bit of a worry”.

John Taylor has bought the crane as part of his salvage business and it was on its way back to Cambridge last night.

Mr Taylor said they would not know what sort of condition it was in, until they got it back to the yard.

Icy conditions early yesterday helped the salvage effort as they made the ground harder.

Peter Crogan, an operator working one of the cranes brought in for the retrieval, said the crane they were moving weighed about 30 tonnes after weights had been taken off it.

The two cranes brought to the site could lift a total of 180 tonnes between them, but Mr Crogan said this was relatively small by modern standards.

A spokesman for English Heritage, said: “A large crane toppled into scheduled land belonging to a property situated next to Stokesay Caste in January 2010.

“It was removed by John Taylor Crane Services after agreement had been reached among the property owner, the crane owner, the insurer and English Heritage on the best way to remove it safely.

“The incident did not cause any damage to Stokesay Castle. The scheduled land is not on EH property and visitors to the castle have not been affected.”

By Hannah Costigan