An appeal in the Oxford Mail for teddy bears to replace those destroyed by flooding has seen 800 donated for a special event at the Cowley Road Carnival.

The Barnardo's charity shop in Cowley Road is aiming to collect 1,000 bears for a teddy bears' picnic in Dawson Street during the carnival on Sunday, July 1.

But just weeks ago the 500 teddies they had collected were ruined when heavy rains left water pouring through the roof of the store on to bags of bears stored in the shop.

Since then, members of the public have come forward to hand over their old teddies - and now 800 have been collected.

Store manager Mandie Burton said: "The public have been great, giving us teddies they have been collecting for years in some cases, because they know our need is great.

"It's been really positive and people have rallied round, but we do really want to get 1,000 bears, to mark 1,000 years of Oxfordshire."

Mrs Burton added: "One thing which is quite lovely was a tiny little teddy bear which was posted to us and it was obviously sent by a child and the postage cost about £1.20 and the bear is only about two inches tall. There's no note in there so I can't thank them, but it was so sweet that they went to the trouble of doing that."

Barnardo's is also hoping for one extra large bear to be donated to act as a centrepiece on the day which could be either raffled off or made subject of a "guess the name of the teddy bear" competition to raise further funds for the children's charity.

Mrs Burton said: "We have had lots of really lovely bears but if we could get one really special one to auction off it would be fab."

All bears need to be received by Wednesday, so that the shop has time to get everything ready for carnival day.

Mrs Burton added: "We did a teddy bears' picnic last year and it raised a few hundred pounds but this is going to be on a much bigger scale so we are hoping to raise even more.

"The money will go directly to Barnardo's to help children and also really raise our profile because a lot of people don't really understand what we do."