A BUSINESSMAN has been found guilty of running a massive subterranean cannabis factory which was buried under a barn at Petrockstowe.

Daniel Palmer’s DNA was found on items seized by police from five interlocked shipping containers which had been hidden under the concrete floor of the barn.

The entrance to the secret growing area was a trap door which was hidden among farm machinery and concealed by sacks of fertiliser.

The barn itself was in a remote part of the 200 acre Easter Hall Park, where it was surrounded by woodland.

Police found more than a kilogram of freshly cropped skunk cannabis in large water butts inside the growing area, which was capable of producing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of drugs a year.

Palmer owns a log cabin making business which is based on another part of farm, where other businesses include a stables and holiday accommodation.

Palmer claimed that items containing his DNA had got into the underground chamber by being picked up by the growers who had rented the land from his father and set up the operation without his knowledge.

Police are still trying to trace the main grower who used a false identity to rent the land using a fake passport and driving licence.

Palmer, aged 40, of Hooper Close, Hatherleigh, denied producing cannabis but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court.

Daniel Moorcroft, aged 40, of Cudham Lane, Knockholt, Kent, was found not guilty.

His only link to the case was DNA on a mug found in one of the shipping containers.

Judge Paul Cook adjourned Palmer’s sentence until September, and granted him bail but warned him this was no indication of sentence.

He said: ‘You will appreciate these are serious matters because of the nature of the operation.’

During a week-long trial the jury heard how police raided it in February 2017 and found a diesel generator running and a cable going down through the concrete into the space below.

There were buckets of cannabis cuttings and a trap door leading to the five containers was hidden under bags of compost.

Forensic experts found traces of DNA from Palmer and two other men inside the containers, where they recovered large amounts of freshly harvested cannabis and well equipped growing rooms.

Lee Bremridge, prosecuting, said police visited the 200 acres of farm and woodland at Easter Hall Park at 7pm on February 10, 2017 and found the generator in a green painted barn which was next to a field full of horses.

They found a manhole leading to five interlinked shipping containers which contained lights, fans, growing beds, watering systems and two large water butts full of freshly cropped cannabis.

Mr Bremridge said: ‘It goes without saying that the excavation work to dig out and remove enough soil to sink five shipping containers and build a barn on top of them must have been huge.

‘This was a large a sophisticated cannabis growing factory with a generator providing power.

This was growing on an industrial scale. The value of what it could have produced would be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.’