Just wanted to warn people that there currently appears to be a spate of attempted and successful burglaries in and around the Forest Hill area. We are aware of at least one attempt further up our road, and yesterday we returned home from work to find that we had been less lucky.

Having first unsuccesfully tried to lever open our rear kitchen window, the theives resorted to smashing though the double glazing to gain entry to the house before making off with anything valueable and easily carried - laptops, jewelery, that kind of thing.

Then, when the emergancy glazier arrived to secure the property, he told us that he had just come from a job at a house near the post office depot behind the mainilne station where they had also been burlged with pretty much the same m.o.

Thinking back, we seem to think there there has been an increase of people knocking on the front door for minor things in the last few weeks, maybe we're just being paranoid, but it feels like the area was being scoped out for likely targets.. either way, I thought I should let people know and ask to keep an eye out for people hanging about gardens or entrances to the rear of your or your neighbours property.

Sorry to hear your bad news. Can I ask do you have a burgular alarm? There has been a few incidents in my road but the are targeting unalarmed houses. Thx

I feel your pain. I got burgled a couple of years back and I imagine you are going through the same sickening feeling. I was very wary of anything out of the ordinary and had an irrational fear of leaving the house for weeks.

I came screaming out of the house one day brandishing a rolling pin thinking someone was trying to break in again, only to find a 5-6 year old kicking a football outside.

I hope you manage to get your life back to normal as soon as possible.

Interesting and very depressing. See my post on the attempted burglary in Honor Oak for our experience of having our front door kicked in and two bikes stolen. [/u]

Apologies for the late reply. The house came with a broken burglar alarm when we moved in at then end of last year so was never used. But I think that the key factor was that the alarm box was taken down at the moment as we are currently having the render on the front of the house replaced. Needless to say, this has since been rectified with a spanking new alarm system!

I moved into Forest Hill in 2009 after running pubs up and down the country with my pub dog (he's a Rottweiler). In April '09 I was woken by a group of lads at 3am trying to open my front door and they succeeded before my dog had a chance to bark. 2 of these lads came face to face with my Rottweiler and they ran like schoolgirls. I have since had a burglar alarm fitted so now double the protection.