A gamekeeper's son has been jailed for five years for unlawfully possessing a sawn-off shotgun.

Jamie Pead was told by a judge there were no exceptional circumstances to prevent him imposing the minimum sentence demanded by Parliament.

The 29-year-old breakdown mechanic claimed the shortened 12-gauge Harrington and Richardson single barrel gun belonged to his late father and he kept it as a memento.

But a judge said he rejected the explanation as “wholly fanciful”, adding: “That simply is not credible.”

Maidstone Crown Court heard police found the weapon when they went to his home in Salisbury Road, High Brooms, Tunbridge Wells, about another matter on May 1 last year.

It was discovered in Pead’s bedroom under a computer work station. Four cartridges were on a nearby bookcase.

He told officers he found the gun in the loft at the house, where his family have lived for 30 years, after his father died in the summer of 2007, aged 59.

Judge Jeremy Carey said Pead came from a game-rearing and shooting family. His father was a part-time gamekeeper.

Pead had an interest in shooting and had worked on the shoot as a beater. He was also a pigeon shooter. He had never held a shotgun licence.

Pead, who admitted possessing a prohibited firearm, left the shotgun where he found it. He said it was of sentimental value to him because it was his only link to his father.

“I have seen photographs of the gun,” said the judge. “It is on any view an ugly weapon. It is not the sort of weapon a father would use taking his son out shooting.

“It is not the sort of weapon any son would want to keep as a memento to his father. It is about as brutish an object as one can imagine in the field of shotgun weapons.

“I reject the submission made that he found the gun in the circumstances he described,” said the judge. “Had he done so I see absolutely no reason why he would not have told both his brother and mother.

“I reach the conclusion he came into possession of this prohibited weapon in other and more sinister circumstances.”

But Judge Carey added: "It is not suggested by the prosecution you had possession of this weapon to carry out any criminal offence.

“But the purpose of the statute of the Firearms Act and very draconian minimum sentence of five years is not to punish those who are in possession necessarily in order to commit offences such as robberies, but to deter those in possession so there should not be any circulation and be available for use."