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A Ford Cortina has been pulled from underwater during the draining of a pond on Hampstead Heath.

The clapped-out car emerged from the water today - and park officers reported it to police in case it amounts to criminal evidence.

The City of London Corporation, which has managed the heath since 1989, said it was uncertain how the vehicle ended up at the bottom of the pond.

A spokesman said: "It may well have been dumped before [1989] but we can’t be 100 per cent certain."

An unusual "metallic eagle" has also been recovered and reported to police.

Ron Vester, 69, a photographer and wildlife campaigner, claimed he saw part of the vehicle protruding from the Model Boating Pond yesterday but only learned it was an old car when he returned this morning to find more water had been drained away.

"Yesterday I was watching the pond receding and I started seeing the rim of something," he said.

"[At the time] I thought it was a model boat, but it turned out to be the roof of a Ford Cortina - Mark II, I believe.

He added: "You can see one of its windows is broken and there's nothing inside it."

The Ford Cortina, the UK's biggest-selling car in the 1970s, was first sold in 1962, meaning the vehicle could have been at the bottom of the pond for more than 50 years.

Pond draining is taking place at Hampstead Heath as part of a project to improve dams so they can better protect the area from flooding.

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Richard Gentry, head of the City of London Corporation's Hampstead Heath constabulary, said: “A car has been exposed and a metallic eagle found by contractors during safety works to the Model Boating Pond.

"Both objects have been reported to the Metropolitan Police as they may be of evidential value."