Four illegal immigrants are behind bars after Northumbria Police found their biggest ever cannabis farm - a £1.65m drugs factory in an 18th Century former student accommodation building.
Criminals had converted the red-brick structure, which was built in the 1700s, into a cannabis factory, capable of producing industrial quantities and they caused significant damage to it in the process. Newcastle Crown Court the four-storey Fenham Hall Studios, in Fenham, Newcastle, contained 200 rooms and had been illegally adapted in a "highly professional and sophisticated set up".
The cannabis farm had growing areas on three floors and separate living quarters for those who tended to the crops. Richard Herrmann, prosecuting, told the court 3,265 viable plants were seized when the building was raided in April last year.
