DEFIANT farmer Arnold Davenport made a passionate plea to a county court judge yesterday as he appealed for the right to stay on his farm.

Mr Davenport, who made a dramatic rooftop protest in July after defying bailiffs at Nab Gate Farm, Harwood, appeared at Bolton County Court yesterday for breaching his eviction order.

Facing a possible jail sentence, as well as losing his home, he claimed he was bullied into signing a legal document which he could not read and described his fight for justice as like "the battle of David and Goliath". In evidence he also claimed he had been duped by landowner Christopher Holt, of Old Nans Lane, Harwood.

Mr Davenport, aged 60, clutched his mascot, a stuffed toy duck, as he told the judge: "If I had known that I was signing my rights away, facing bankruptcy and prison, do you think I would have willingly signed it?

"I feel very strongly and very upset about what the Holts have done to me. That's why I went up on the roof because I didn't know what I had done. It was my home. Every English man has a castle, and that is mine."

Defending, Ms Katherine Dunn QC, told how Mr Davenport was illiterate but had signed a series of important documents, signing away his rights, without legal representation.

A document signed last August by Mr Davenport, meant the farmer agreed to give up the farm in May this year, his defence said.

Ms Dunn claimed the former tenant farmer did not give his consent to leave the farm. Cross-examining, Mr Stephen Pritchett QC, said that Mr Davenport was not used to telling the truth, claiming that he had lied for years about his age, producing a birth certificate which showed that the farmer was in fact 60 and not 58 as he had always said.

He also expressed doubt that Mr Davenport did not have legal representation at the time of signing the tenancy agreement in August 2001 and read out a series of letters between a solicitor, Andrew Rothwell, who was understood to have been acting on Mr Davenport's behalf, he said. However, the farmer said that at the time that he was made to sign legal documents, he had trusted his close family friend, Mr Rothwell, because he had been suffering from severe depression and had considered "topping himself". He claimed Mr Rothwell had "sold him down the river" by giving bad advice.

District Judge Derwin Hope heard evidence from Lawrence Parsons, of Somerton Road, Breightmet, that he had overheard a gentleman's agreement between Mr Davenport and the late Liberal MP Arthur Holt, the former landowner and Christopher Holt's father, saying that the farmer would be able to stay at the farm. Mr Pritchett suggested that Mr Parsons could not possibly remember the words of a conversation which happened in the 1980s.

(Proceeding)