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AN AMATEUR ANTIQUE dealer has been jailed after he was caught with 57 stolen antique books, including an extremely rare King James Bible.
Andrew Shannon (51) was previously jailed for damaging a €10 million Monet painting at the National Gallery in December 2014.
Shannon of Willans Way, Ongar, Dublin pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the books at his home while knowing or being reckless as to whether they were stolen on 3 March 2007. He was convicted by a jury last February.
Judge Petria McDonnell sentenced him to one year in prison with the final six months suspended.
Shannon was previously sentenced to six years imprisonment with the final 15 months suspended for damaging the Claude Monet painting. He had denied the charge but was convicted following trial. He moved to appeal his conviction in December of last year but judgment is still awaited.
Shannon’s 35 other convictions include theft and burglary.
The court heard that the 57 stolen books had originated in the library of Carton House in Kildare, the historical family seat of the FitzGerald family.
Detective Garda Des Breathnach told Maurice Coffey BL, prosecuting, that in November 2006 the owner of Carton House reported that the books had been stolen after they were put in storage during the restoration of the country house.
The “distinctive books” were later found “openly on show” on “two bookshelves” in the house of Shannon in March 2007. Shannon was arrested in November of the same year.
Counsel said that the books were “an antique gem” and included a 1660 edition of the King James Bible. There was an agreement at the trial that the total overall value of the books was €6,500.
Shannon told gardaí he had purchased these books at a fete in the Midlands in 2002.
Conor Mallaghan gave evidence during the trial that he has worked at Carton House since 1994 overseeing its restoration after his father’s company bought the estate in 1977. He said that before restoration work began, he put all items in the house, including the library books, into storage.
He said he photographed each book before storing it.
The books remained in boxes until 2006 when the process of restoring them to the library began. Mr Mallaghan said it was then he noticed the missing books and went to the gardaí.
Defence counsel John Fitzgerald BL said his client suffered from a heart condition and asked the court to take this into account.
Judge McDonnell said that Shannon trained as a French polisher and was an amateur antique dealer who had a “propensity based on previous convictions of acquiring things.”
She said that the books were “part of the heritage of Carton House.”
“I note they were well maintained and safe as there were photos showing where they were kept in Mr Shannon’s house.”
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No one seems interested in the basic function of farming, creating food.!Any suggestions on what we should eat when all the rewilding is complete!
@Tommy Lennon: Nearly all the food we produce is exported though, so rewilding vast swathes of land wouldn’t affect our access to food.
@Tommy Lennon: Heather!! This hogwash is really going overboard. 5.2 Million people have to eat something!!
Few years ago they couldn’t give away enough money to reclaim land, bogs were drained, ditches bulldozed to make fields bigger now give more money to put it back, what next
@Andy Murphy: it’s as if priorities can change over time.
Mad, Ted!
@Ciaran Foster: or money changes hands ?
Totally agree. I bought the book from Eoghan back in December as a present but could not stop reading it.. great eye opener when walking around any nature area and looking at our human shaped environment.
Bought the book. Eoghan knows what he is talking about, we should listen
Lord save us from this stuff, so we return good farmland to the so called wild bush,
I have known so called farmers like this and they were to lazy to work their land and produce food, this was their cop out for not working their inheritance farm,
The boyo who wrote this article seems like one of them.
@Ned: You sound bitter. Were they “to” lazy to learn to spell also?
Every day I read or hear about another demand from the “Green Agenda”. Previously I would have considered myself environmentally conscious but I have rapidly become less so due to the polarised views presented.
More tree planting, ditch fertiliser (go organic) , drop bovines and ovines 20% in favor of grains and vegetables. Pay farmers to do so. Targets met… Simple..and it will be done.
Folks, do yourselves a favour and read his book.
Great book, highly recommend!
I’ve no problem to pay farmers to rewind their farms
But let’s house the homeless fix our health first eh?
We should change our approach to land use. A farm should be an inclosed area where sheep / goat / cows won’t go outside to graze on every little tree sapling. Same for sikka deer that has gone out of control in recent years. Nature and biodiversity has no chance in this country atm.
There are 8 Billion people on this planet that have to be fed every day and this idiot wants us to grow weeds. Enough of this nonsense. No matter what we do on this little island it will make little or no difference to global warming. We’re not the cause of the problem, but we could help alleviate the consequences.
@Liam Dunne: well we are the cause of the problem, rich countries like ireland are the ones who consume the most and produce the most carbon per capita, we still contribute to the overall problem
@Liam Dunne: It’s not about global warming, it’s about biodiversity. Read the article, then try reading some books.
We need all houses to be carbon neutral…citizens deserve at least cheap/free heating.
I’ve noticed a lot of hedgerows getting torn out of grazing fields near me over the last 2-3 winters.
It makes little sense, the farmer only gains a few square meters of space. Then any farm animals in the fields lose shelter from the elements during wind, rain & heat.
And of course nature loses its last piece of wilderness on the edge of the field.
Is there some sort of subsidy to do this sort of work or why is it being done?
So you want us to pay farmers to not work on the least viable part of their land. Sure.
@Dan Dare: they would need money to maintain fences to keep deer, sheep & goats off the land while it recovers.
Kill an extra quarter of a million cows a year and rewild as much land as possible . What will people eat if this goes ahead ? And there is no point in saying that we export most of what we produce as if that makes its consumption somewhere else on the planet irrelevant
Unbelievable, I grew up in a large farming community. Farmers are so so wealthy. The new generation of farmers are splashing the cash, massive mansions, big 4×4′s, new cars etc. Some small farmers may struggle a little like the rest of us. But the cash the big dairy guys are rolling in is unbelievable!
have your say