Arsonist jailed for attack on National Trust property

David Neal was jailed for 27 months after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to arson in the outbuilding at Farnborough Hall near Kineton.

Neal, 53, of Lytham Road, Rugby, also admitted the theft of a CCTV camera from the National Trust-owned property, where original owners the Holbech family still live.

Prosecutor Andrew Wallace said that in August last year Neal stole the camera in broad daylight from an enclosed yard, to which the public have no access.

He returned to the house two weeks later, and was captured by a CCTV camera as he walked around wearing sunglasses and with a rucksack on his back.

At 4.15pm smoke was seen coming from the roof of an outbuilding in the family’s enclosed private garden, which is again an area not open to the public.

The building is used as a tool store, and among the items inside were petrol-driven lawnmowers, cans of petrol and other gardening tools.

A naked flame had been used to set fire to petrol in the building, and Holbech family member Caroline Beddall said it was estimated the fire caused damage that would cost £25,000 to repair.

When Neal was arrested the police found matches and a candle in his rucksack, and at his home were print-outs from the internet of fires at other stately homes.

But Neal, who had numerous previous convictions for theft, claimed his wife had printed them off and denied being responsible for the fire in the outbuilding, said Mr Wallace.

Scott Coughtrie, defending, said a psychiatric report had concluded that Neal ‘suffers from no mental condition which at the time would have affected his reasoning.

Mr Coughtrie said: “It was a tool shed in a private garden. This was a deliberate attempt to cause criminal damage by fire, as opposed to an intent to endanger life.”

Neal, who worked for 28 years on the railways, had been bullied at school and led an isolated existence.

Mr Coughtrie said: “He feels that life has passed him by. He hasn’t been an achiever, and he clearly has a sense of resentment.”

He pointed out that the CCTV camera had been stolen from a different part of the grounds, so had not been taken in preparation for the arson.

He disputed the £25,000 damage figure, commenting that there was damage to items in the tool store, but no evidence of damage to the walls or ceiling of the building itself.

And Recorder Christopher Tickle observed: “It looks as if items were burned, rather than the building. The £25,000 appears to be a figure plucked out of the air, and rather on the high side.”

Jailing Neal, Recorder Tickle told him: “Cases of arson are always very serious. It’s not only the danger to occupiers of the premises who may come across the fire, it also endangers fire crews.

“The fire in this case, I am quite satisfied, was limited, and the building was an outbuilding unconnected to any residence. The stately home itself was some distance away.

“What makes this case more serious is that you went there quite deliberately to do this. In the outbuilding, as one was likely to find in tool sheds, were lawnmowers and petrol.

“What we have here is a deliberate act which, I am quite satisfied, was based on resentment and feelings of inadequacy and the like.”