The main road through Penryn was closed yesterday evening while engineers fixed a gas leak.

Residents were warned to stay in their homes as the leak, which affected four houses on The Terrace, was isolated.

Firefighters were called to the scene at 8pm and a team from Wales and West Utilities joined them shortly afterwards.

The leak was fixed and the gas switched back on by 11pm.

A spokeswoman for the utility company said there was no major damage to the pipes, adding that "most" gas leaks occur in the autumn when there are large temperature changes in a short space of time.

Similar temperature spikes recently may have put added strain on the infrastructure.

"If there's big changes in temperature that's really what does it," she said, "if there's any weaknesses in a pipes then that will expose it."

Mark Hewitt, from Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, was one of the first on the scene.

"There was quite a significant gas leak," he said, "Wales and West Utilities arrived and isolated it, so what potentially could have been an incident requiring a lot of evacuation has been dealt with very quickly."