Ava Stuart, of Montague Gardens in Petersfield, said she couldn't believe the offensive messages she saw scrawled all over the children's climbing frame at the park next to Heath Road and said it was her granddaughter who first drew her attention to it.

"She has just started learning to read and when I heard her trying to read aloud some of the words I was horrified," she said. "She even asked me what was written there."

Mrs Stuart, who ushered her granddaughter away to another piece of equipment, said there were more than 10 offensive messages written on the facility's wooden frame in black marker pen.

"It is coming up to the school holidays and children will be all over that play equipment. Those that can read will be shouting it out," she said. "It must have been drunken teenagers, who else would do such a thing?

"There is a small minority of young people whose parents aren't responsible for them. When my children were young I knew where they were."

Two other pieces of equipment at the playground had to be cordoned off over the weekend. Vandals had smashed a perspex dome attached to another climbing frame while a tyre swing was also broken.

An officer for Petersfield Town Council, which owns the equipment, said: "We have a contract with East Hampshire District Council for graffiti removal and they will get rid of it.

"Somebody smashed one of the panels in a dome on a climbing frame so we have had to shut it all off pending repairs. The universal joint has sheered off the large tyre swing which is possibly not the fault of vandalism but an unforeseen fault with the equipment."