Jail for Walsingham Abbey snowdrop thief

A thief, who helped dig up 13,000 snowdrop bulbs from a pilgrimage site in Norfolk, is beginning a 10 month prison sentence.

Stefan Simpson, 30, and Peter Gibbs, 31, from near Wisbech, stole the bulbs from Walsingham Abbey near Fakenham in a night raid in March.

It is thought monks originally planted the snowdrops in the Middle Ages.

Both men admitted theft and criminal damage at an earlier hearing and were sentenced at Norwich Crown Court on Friday. Simpson, of Lilac Close, Walsoken, Norfolk, was jailed for 10 months.Gibbs, of Colville Road, Newton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, was ordered tocomplete 200 hours of unpaid work and given a three-month curfew.

Walsingham has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages and styles itself as "England's Nazareth".