ASTONISHED police officers discovered cannabis plants with a street value of a £1million being grown inside every room of a five bedroom detached home.

Officers found 750 cannabis plants, some up to 5ft high, under cultivation. Even the upstairs toilet of the house in Victory Road, Little Lever, was being used to grow the plants.

And today, as the former occupant of the home 22-year-old Huynh Hoang was starting a 21-month prison sentence, police chiefs revealed it was the largest cannabis farm ever found in Bolton.

Insp Matt Oxley of Bolton Police said: "The scale of the operation inside the house was enormous. It was far bigger than we ever anticipated."

Vietnamese-born Hoang pleaded guilty at Bury Magistrates Court yesterday to conspiracy to supply a controlled drug with a potential street value of £1million.

Hoang was arrested after officers from Farnworth's Community Beat Office executed a warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act at his address on July 4, 2003.

The court was told he was found at the five-bedroom house along with tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment needed for cannabis gowing.

Plants at every stage of development were found in the house - which is a former shop - including 500 mature plants and 250 saplings.

Officers then raided a second house in Station Road, Swinton, which had also been rented by Hoang.

After searching the second house, police recovered evidence that around 350-400 mature cannabis plants had been recently cropped, the potential yield of which was estimated at about £500,000.

The closed net curtains at the house in Little Lever shielded the cannabis farm, giving the home an air of normal domesticity.

But families living either side of what used to be the local mini supermarket admitted they did become suspicious by the number visitors to the house in the middle of the night.

One neighbour said: "We did once or twice notice a strange smell coming from the house but thought it was just weeds or flowers. He seemed a quiet man and kept himself to himself."

A mother, living opposite the cannabis farm, added: "Sometimes you could literally smell the plants. I'm upset to discover he's been growing drugs because I don't want that going on around my kids."