Shipdham residents were left fearing for their safety on Monday after two articulated lorries got into difficulty at the Mill Road/ A1075 junction in just one day.

At 8am one lorry came within a whisker of hitting a house on the narrow junction, before the second seemed to receive its predecessor's karma at around 11.30am as it toppled over in a field having been unable to turn left onto the main road.

The house's owner Toby Gooch said: 'Our homes are important enough to be listed, but not important enough to be protected.'

Fellow resident Gillian de Cruz said the problems at the junction have been around for a while.

She said: 'The residents of Shipdham have long been concerned about the size of vehicles coming along the main road and Mill Road. Shrub House and the church wall, which are both listed, have been hit on a number of occasions.

'Urgent thought and action needs to be given to the village signage and traffic volumes to ensure resident's safety.'

The first vehicle came so close to the walls of Shrub House on the corner of Mill Road that the property's owner Ruth Gooch, who had been getting her children ready for school at the time, had to come out of her house and stop the driver from turning down the road.

But the worst was yet to come for both driver and homeowner as just a couple of hours later another lorry came up Mill Road the other way, attempting to turn left onto the A1075 but was instead forced into the narrow Church Lane directly opposite.

In a desperate attempt to turn the vehicle around, he then drove into the field further down Church Lane and tried to turn around.

As he reversed into the muddy field, he then toppled his lorry over and was forced to go back to Mrs Gooch's house for help in a wry twist of fate.

Removal company Tears was called to right the toppled truck, which recoverer Steve Clark said was fully laden with 11 tonnes of cargo and itself would have weighed around 30 tonnes.

The driver, was reportedly not from the area nor familiar with the narrow country roads and had not appreciated their unsuitability for his size of vehicle.

Tears spent around an hour and a half using the crane to lift and remove the vehicle from the field.