An art gallery in Hale, Cheshire, UK, has had 15 works of art stolen – worth around £300,000 and including pieces by L S Lowry – just one week after opening.

A gang of masked robbers reportedly smashed the front windows of the Clark Art Gallery – a top-end art gallery specialising in British modern art – with a manhole cover and stole paintings by Lowry, Helen Bradley and Terry Frost within three minutes.

One of the Lowry paintings, Two Women and Children, had already been sold for £115,000 and Frost’s Red Wedge has been valued at £52,000.

It is thought that the robbers had scoped the paintings out during the first week, which saw 200 people walk through the gallery doors.

Owner Bill Clark, who owns another gallery in London, has offered a reward of £25,000 for any information that leads to the return of the paintings, as well as the arrest and conviction of the thieves.

The Clark Art Gallery opened on 20 September this year. Details: clark-art.co.uk