Bailey, who is retired, said he feared fish would die in the lake, which is part of his commercial fishery and provides his only income.

He said the pollution reached a natural spring feeding the pond and was “not a bucket or a barrel – it is a lot of oil”.

Bailey said someone nearby would know they were losing oil, or they should do.

He said he had seen a dead fish and a duck covered in kerosene, adding deer drank from the stream and there was frog spawn in the silt trap that could be affected.

“Until the Environment Agency finds out where it’s coming from, it will keep leaking,” he said.

He said the fishery had a main lake below the silt trap and stock pond, and if oil got into the lake, it could affect fish, geese, moorhens, coots, herons and kingfishers.