As The Advocate reports, Margaret Bird, 77, was disgusted last week to find the windows of her old miner’s cottage had been smashed.

The Advocate team visited and inspected the property last week and was confronted with a veranda laden with broken glass and security flywire that had been ripped from the windows.

We also saw a steel pole that Ms Bird believes had been used to smash the windows and a boot mark on the cottage’s front door where someone had tried to kick their way in.

The most disturbing part about the whole sorry saga is that Ms Bird says this is not the first time her property has been vandalised.

Where do people get off thinking they can destroy other people’s property?

Ms Bird admits her property is pretty run down, I think “a bit derelict” were the exact words she used, but who cares?

It’s hers and no one else has the right to give her grief by smashing in windows and wreaking havoc.

“I’m getting really angry about it,” Ms Bird told The Advocate.

“It leaves a really nasty taste in your mouth.

“I can’t really sleep well at night time because you hear vehicles and you think, ‘Oh, I wonder if that’s someone trying to break in’.

“I don’t know what they think they’re going to find .. .it just makes me angry.”

Let’s hope the vandals don’t strike again.