Firefighters were called to tackle a burning ice cream van outside a secondary school on one of the coldest days of the year. 

Two fire crews were sent to the scene on Normanton Park, Chingford, at just after midday yesterday. 

The van was parked outside of Heathcote Secondary School and pupils took to Twitter after seeing smoke bellowing out of the van. 

One student posted on Twitter: "Our ice cream van is on fire. Broke my heart a little, the old man was just standing on the road looking at it. Like what do you do at that point?"

Another uploaded a photo of the charred remains and wrote: "No more sweets and ice cream for Heathcote for a while."

Firefighters spent two hours extinguishing the fire which is said to have been caused by a propane cylinder. 

London Fire Brigade used the incident to release a series of Tweets containing puns.