Two travellers who stole a £50,000 horse box from Silent Witness actress Amanda Burton have been jailed after police traced them using a hidden tracker.

Samuel Dighton, 35, and Henry Dunn, 24, were sentenced at Hove Crown Court yesterday after being found guilty of theft by a jury in October.

Dighton was jailed for six months and Dunn for nine months after they stole the Oakley horse box from the star's home in Five Ashes, near Crowborough, in November 2003.

The pair made the early morning raid with a third man by smashing their way through one of the horse box windows before driving it away.

A neighbour spotted them and reported the theft to police who immediately began trailing the horse box using a tracking device hidden inside the vehicle.

Police officers retrieved the box hours later near a main road in Basildon in Essex.

In her statement to police, Miss Burton, using her married name Amanda Arnstein, described how she was a member of a horse club and used the vehicle to transport animals and valuable equipment.

Rowland Morris, representing Dunn, said: "It was a rather unintelligent theft and has all the hallmarks of something that is very thoughtless and unsophisticated.

"It is a serious matter but this theft was not domestic and it is not a questioning of stealing something essential."

The actress, who is married to photographer Sven Arnstein and has two children, landed her first role in Brookside in 1982.

After four years in the Liverpool soap, she moved on and has since established herself as one of Britain's top actresses. The role of uncompromising medic Sam Ryan in Silent Witness earned her the title of Most Popular Actress in the National Television Awards.

She didn't appear in court.

Dighton, a married father-of-two who lives in a caravan in Sevenoaks, Kent, denied any part in the theft throughout the trial.

His accomplice Dunn, a married father-of-one who was living on a caravan site in New Ash Green in Kent, is already serving a 12-month prison sentence for a number of motoring offences.

Recorder Mr Charles Macdonald said: "This was a planned offence and the theft was only detected by the fact that the horse box was fitted with a tracker device.

"There is no doubt that this offence is so serious only a custodial sentence can be justified."