Prison appeal win for man who damaged Burns Cottage

Published on Thursday 30 July 2009 22:13

A MAN who vandalised Burns Cottage, in a drunken prank, on the 250th anniversary of the Bard's birth won an appeal yesterday and had a jail term replaced by a £500 fine.

The sheriff who imposed the original 60-day sentence on Daniel Black, 21, had said that society's disgust at the "attack" on the cottage, when clumps of thatch from the roof were pulled out, had to be marked in a tangible way.

However, appeal judges decided that the 11 days Black served behind bars before being freed on bail had given him a short, sharp shock, and that he did not need to be sent back.

Black, of Inkerman Court, Ayr, attended a party in a house near the cottage in the Ayrshire village of Alloway.

On leaving, he tried to climb on to the roof "to give his friends a laugh", but he slipped down with handfuls of thatch.

At Ayr Sheriff Court, Black admitted charges of breach of the peace and vandalism – no cost had been estimated for the damage – and was given sentences of 20 and 40 days, to be served consecutively.

Sheriff John McGowan said Burns Cottage

was the centrepiece of the Burns Centre, on which considerable sums of money were spent "out of pride and affection for Scotland's national poet".