Police revealed today they believe the Fenland ‘Downton Abbey’ drugs mansion raided earlier this week was grossing over £400,000 every nine weeks.
Det Insp David Murphy said the plants found at the house had an estimated street value of £895,000. Drugs paraphernalia has been taken away for destruction at a secret location.
“The house will now be locked up and made secure while our investigations continue,” he said.
“Crime drip feeds pain into the veins of society. The people doing this are earning big money, why would they care that they have destroyed a beautiful old building that you may never be able to get back to its former glory.
“There is no emotional attachment to the property; it’s just a base to earn money. It is heartbreaking to see.”
Police estimate that each yield of plants will have netted up to £400,000 every nine weeks.
Three days after police – acting on a tip off – turned up at the nine-bedroom home in March, almost 1,800 plants and associated drugs paraphernalia have been removed from the property.
Eight officers from Cambridgeshire Police have stripped the Wimblington Road house of its illicit contents leaving a mess of mould, littered rooms, and a hefty clean up job costing thousands for whoever now has to restore the family home to its former glory.
The owner, who lives in London, has been contacted and is aware of what has happened to the building.
Police think the ‘factory’ had been in operation for six months – and could have grossed £1 million in that time.
“It is easy to see with those amounts of money why so much effort has been put into this professional operation,” said Insp Murphy.
The bedrooms have been left with floors covered in pond liner with up to two inches of water in which hundreds of crates of plants were sitting to grow.
Walls are still covered in plastic and the lighting system leads remain hanging from the ceilings.
The air filtration maze of tunnels, which took the intense smell of the plants out through the roof of the million pound price tag home, have been ripped out.
In the meantime, the intense heat and damp of the growing operation has left mould teeming on all of the walls of the building.
Det Insp. Murphy said the house “looks like something you would see in Downton Abbey or the place people take on for Grand Designs, not where you expect to see a highly professional cannabis factory.”
A 33 year old from Whitstable in Kent and a 30 year old man from Twickenham have been arrested in connection with supplying cannabis and have been released on bail.
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