Landowner guilty of holding noisy rave (From The Argus)

Landowner guilty of holding noisy rave

5:19pm Tuesday 26th February 2008 in

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A landowner who held an illegal rave in the Sussex countryside which was heard for miles around has been given a suspended jail sentence.

Conrad Ryder-Large, 50, was branded selfish by a judge at Lewes Crown Court for staging the party which was attended by hundreds of people in the summer of 2006.

People living up to four miles away were kept awake all night by the loud music at the rave at Ryder-Large's ten acre home Riverside Stables, at Lindfield, near Haywards Heath.

Ryder-Large and John Castrillon, 31, of Clifton Street, Brighton, who was the DJ for the party, denied causing a public nuisance but they were convicted after a trial.

Ryder-Large claimed the event was a private double 40th birthday party for friends and he described people who complained as "killjoys."

When police arrived he accused them of behaving like the "Gestapo."

The court heard police, who received complaints from as far away as the villages of Ardingly and Horsted Keynes, asked him repeatedly to turn down the music.

Officers set up road blocks to turn away people heading to the party on Saturday June 10.

In the middle of the night, in order to try to stop the noise officers took the key to the generator powering the sound system. But the machine was hot-wired and the party carried on until Sunday afternoon.

During the trial Ryder-Large was described by the prosecution as the "neighbour from hell" for allowing such a large party to go ahead. A year earlier another all-night party on his land caused disturbance to people living nearby as it lasted for 32 hours.

Judge Richard Hayward sentenced Ryder-Large, who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome and receives incapacity benefit, to three months in jail suspended for two years.

He imposed a prohibitive activity order banning him from arranging another party on his land for two years.

Castrillon was fined £2,000.

Both men were ordered to pay £1,500 costs.

The judge said: "I don't accept this was a private party. I think he is a very self-opinionated man and he felt he wanted to have this rave on this land and to hell with everyone else.

"You are described as an eccentric who leads an alternative lifestyle. In interview when asked about the people who were disturbed you said there were neurotic with no beautiful thoughts in their heads. You are a selfish man who thinks you can live as you wish with no thought for others."

A third defendant, Mandy Thompson, 40, of Fonthill Road, Hove, who admitted the offence before the trial, will be sentenced at a later date.

After the hearing Ryder-Large said: "This case represents the triumph of envy in England, a complaining culture and the hypocritical syndrome.

"I have been convicted by boring, bourgeois, bad-thinking, middle England. I've been convicted as a result of the over criminalisation of the English population which is making so many innocent acts illegal."