Four more charged on country house raids (From Witney Gazette)

Four more charged on country house raids

8:15am Tuesday 17th October 2006 in Witney

FOUR more men have been charged with plotting to commit burglary in connection with a spate of break-ins at stately homes.

Danny O'Loughlin, 30, Albert Johnson, 31, Richard Johnson, 31, and Michael Nicholls, 27, all from Cheltenham, will appear before Reading magistrates on Thursday accused of conspiring to steal cash machines and burgle country houses.

Thames Valley Police have already charged two other men over stately home burglaries, including one at the Manor, Stanton Harcourt, in November last year.

A further five people were held in Gloucester. Of those, two have been released on bail.

The arrests, which took place in Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, were part of a joint operation between Thames Valley Police, West Mercia Constabulary, Warwickshire Police, Wiltshire Police and Gloucestershire Police.

Officers are investigating burglaries at Ramsbury Manor in Wiltshire in February; Woolley Park House in Berkshire in April last year.