Three horses found roaming busy roads around Bristol Parkway railway station were herded to safety by passers-by.

Faye Hood, 21, a business administrator from Bradley Stoke, was driving into the station shortly before 8am today when the horses ran across the road in front of her.

Miss Hood stopped her car and chased them on foot with another person, worried they would bolt into a main road.

She caught one of them and held it by her dog lead and led it to a field where other people had rounded up the other two and were also holding them on leads.

They were earlier spotted around pedestrians on the footpath at the station and on Hatchet Lane.

The group of six stayed with the horses for more than two and a half hours until an emergency rescue team from the charity Horseworld, based in Whitchurch, came to pick them up.

"Their tails and manes were all mangled, one of them had cuts all over his legs and one had a big ulcer underneath his mouth, which was disgusting and weeping," said Miss Hood.

"It makes you feel horrible, how people can treat animals like that."

Mark Owen, director of Horseworld, said: "We picked up the horses at about 10.45am and took them back to Horseworld, where they were checked by vets.

"They are now being looked after by staff here in isolation facilities. I have lodged the three horses as abandoned or missing with the police and we will be meeting the prospective owners of these horses tomorrow with an RSPCA inspector.

"Unfortunately this sort of thing is very common at the moment because of the economy, and this is the second rescue operation we have attended this week," he told the Bristol Evening Post.