A GREAT-GRANDFATHER who was jailed for five years for building a cannon has branded his sentence “harsh”.

Roy Bennett, from Horwich , has spent the last two-and-a-half years behind bars for constructing a workable cannon and keeping it without a licence.

He built the device for his brother to use in American Second World War re-enactment.

Speaking for the first time since his release from prison, Mr Bennett, who is disabled after being born with a club foot and has no previous convictions, admitted he failed to get the cannon properly licensed but says he believes his sentence was too harsh.

The 74-year-old said the “ground opened up”

when he was sentenced and added: “Suddenly everything is taken away from you in an instant and you go into a system that it totally alien.”

An armed police SWAT team swooped on the great-grandfather’s home to arrest him in April, 2009, after they were tipped off he had tested the cannon in the Salford gun range at a disused quarry.

He said: "There was a knock on the door and the police had come with guns, it was wall-to-wall with them, there was a sniper and a helicopter and they had dogs.

“A policeman introduced himself and said 'I believe you have a cannon'.”

The former engineer added: “It was purely a demonstrative thing for re-enactment for my brother to use. There is so much romance in the word cannon, you think of pirates and all sorts of things but it was just a front piece for them to let off a blank charge to get things going at the reenactments.”

Mr Bennett, a former farmer and gun ranger, collected guns before he was jailed and had amassed a stash of antique and modern weapons—with two rifles dating back to the Indian mutiny in 1857.

Although he had both a gun licence and an explosives licence, a number of the weapons were not registered, including the cannon.

He said: “I rang the police before I made it to ask what I needed to do and they said I would have to send it to the Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof House and then put it on my explosives licence.

“I made it within the legal parameters of my certificate but I just didn’t get around to getting it licensed — I wanted to test it first.”

Despite recommendations from the probation service to give Mr Bennett a community sentence, Judge Lindsey Kushner jailed him for five years, the minimum term for possessing an illegal firearm as she said she could not see any “exceptional circumstances”

to limit the sentence.

Other inmates and prison officers dubbed the him the “cannon man”

and he says they treated him with respect because of his unusual crime.

Mr Bennett made national headlines while he was at HMP Kirkham when he built a wheelchair for a disabled cat, after the prison’s governor responded to a request in the local newspaper.

Mr Bennett, who used to work in an animal sanctuary before he was jailed, had made similar devices for injured dogs, cats and even a three-legged horse.

Since his release, Mr Bennett says he has struggled to adjust to life.

His partner left him following his conviction, making him homeless, and he lost his job at an animal sanctuary.

Mr Bennett has also struggled to access benefits and has been helped by Bolton probation officer Nadine Roberts.

He said: “When you come out, you think everyone is looking at you and staring like they know you have been in prison. There is this stigma.

“I've found when you go to the authorities and explain the gap in your claims is due to being inside then you get put to the bottom of the pile.”