Two boys died trapped in a house fire after their mother ran to get help, accidentally locking the front door behind her, neighbours said yesterday.

Lewis and Taylor Goldsmith, aged 5 and 7, were playing under the stairs in the hallway when fire and smoke spread through the house on an estate in Eastbourne.

Their mother Denise, 29, and neighbours tried desperately to reach the children but nobody could break through the front or back doors to save them.

Sussex Police said there was no indication of suspicious circustances but detectives from the Major Crime Branch had begun an investigation.

The boys’ headmaster said the boys would be sadly missed. Friends and neighbours laid floral tributes to them on the estate.

Jason Maynard, 35, described how he and his brother, Gary, 37, had been laying a new kitchen floor at their mother’s house opposite when the fire broke out at 3pm on Saturday.

“I knew something was up when I heard a woman screaming for help outside,” he said. “We went out to see what was going on and another neighbour was trying to smash the front door open.

“The mother was outside on the path, just screaming the place down. She had come outside when the fire started to get help but the front door had slammed behind her and she couldn’t get back in.

“She told me her kids were playing inside, under the stairs. She was screaming, ‘Please save my kids. Get them out, my kids, my kids, my kids’.

“The front door is one of those doors that you can only open from the inside unless you have a key. The kids wouldn’t have been able to reach the door latch to let themselves out. They were just trapped.

“It was obvious we weren’t going to get in through the front so we went round the back to see if there was a water butt or something that we could use to batter the door down.

“We tried to get through the back door. We came back round the front and tried to get in again but by then it was too late. The kitchen had already caught fire. The house was just full of flames. They were licking at the door frames and shooting up the stairs, and there was a huge amount of smoke. There was nothing we could do.

“When the fire brigade turned up they battered the door down and went inside, then brought the kids’ bodies out and laid them on the pavement. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.”

Caryl Williams, who lives opposite, said: “They were lovely little boys. They’d just been bought a new trampoline and they looked like they were having so much fun.”

Chief Inspector Dick Coates, the Eastbourne District Commander, said that the cause of the fire had not yet been established and that this would take police and the East Sussex Fire and Resuce Service some days.

“Initial indications do not suggest anything other than this being a tragic accident but I have to keep an open mind on this until a full investigation of the scene can be conducted.

“The loss of anyone’s life is tragic enough but for us to lose such young children from our community is a tragic blow.”

There were harrowing scenes when the mother returned yesterday to lay flowers on the doorstep but was unable to pass the police cordon.

“Let me in, I need to leave these flowers for my boys. I need to get through, this is my home,” she pleaded.

After a minor struggle, the mother and her relatives were led back to their car.

The flowers had been dropped but a forensic science investigator retrieved them and placed them on the doorstep inside the cordon.

John Greenwood, head of Shine-water Primary School, said: “Both boys will be very sadly missed. This will obviously have a profound effect on the school and the local community.”

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