When a sewer clearance team was sent to investigate a blocked pipe next to a pub, the workers were not expecting the cause to be a crowbar.

But that’s exactly what the Southern Water crew found had led to the blockage in Tunbridge Wells.

The company deals with 50,000 blocked wastewater pipes each year which are mostly caused by wet wipes in toilets, or fat, oil and grease down kitchen sinks.

However, in more unusual cases, bedsheets, clothes, toys and Christmas lights have been discovered.

Head of wastewater networks Alex Saunders said: “My teams have all come across weird and wonderful things inside sewers, but this was a new one on me.

“When we’re warning people to only put three Ps down the loo – poo, pee and paper – instead of unflushables like wet wipes and sanitary products, or to keep fat, oil and grease out their pipes, we never thought to include a crowbar in that list.

“In this case it would appear someone has either thrown or dropped it down a drain cover – but the knock-on effect would have been very serious had we not reached the blockage.

"This was a case which demonstrated how much we have improved our response to blockages in recent years, resulting in a region-wide fall in overall pollutions.

“The addition of more than 22,000 artificial intelligence monitors which detect when sewers in blockage ‘hotspots’ are backing up is changing the game and enabling us to get to far more blockages before the problem turns into a crisis."

Sewer blockages are the most common cause of pollution incidents and can cause manholes to spill over into watercourses, harming wildlife and damaging gardens. Sewers can also back up and flood inside properties.

Among the more unusual finds in pipes was last year, when engineers working in Gloucestershire found a duck roaming the sewers.

The bird, which gave a robotic camera a quizical look, was unscathed and safely removed.