THE hunt is on to find the owners of a car found in a Hampshire lake.

The Renault Clio was discovered partially submerged in a lake in Rownhams on Thursday evening.

Now the search is on to contact the owners after recovery teams completed a painstaking mission to drag it from the water.

Families and neighbours gathered at the waterside in Lakeside Avenue to watch crews launch a delicate operation to ease the damaged vehicle to safety.

It is unclear how the silver car ended up in the water.

Crews from Owslebury Garage in Winchester arrived at 11.30am on Saturday to launch a three hour operation to recover it.

They reversed a slide bed recovery truck to the lakeside and used hydraulic winch to drag the car sideways to line it up with the back of the truck.

Garage partner Nigel White said: “The difficulty was that the car was 15ft to the right of the lorry so we had to line it up.

"After that it was quite straight forward to lift it until the rear came above the quayside.”

Mr White, who was called in by Test Valley Borough Council to remove it, said no pollution had been caused but that the car is likely to be written off.

Police are not investigating.