HOLIDAY dreams became costly nightmares for people persuaded to invest in a timeshare.

Many of those bought into the scheme were lured by the prospect of trading their week in the picturesque stately home near Thirsk, for a week in the Florida sunshine.

But their hopes of getting a golden tan on an American beach led to them getting their fingers burned because of financial double dealing on the part of the timeshare company, Sutton Hall Ltd.

Anthony Stead, a senior executive with the company, was today beginning a two-year sentence for his part in the scandal, but two of its other senior managers, Terence Webster and Simon Grant, are on the run and there is little prospect that any of the holiday hopefuls will see a penny back.

Jackie and Bob Bellwood, of Selby, are among the lucky ones - they fought tooth and nail and got their money back - but had to put their home on the line to pay spiralling legal costs.

"The sentence is nowhere enough for the heartache they have caused," said Jackie, who said she had been certain when they had visited Sutton Hall, they would not be persuaded to buy a timeshare.

"But the sales pitch was wonderful and we liked the idea of buying something we could pass on to our children - and the fact the TSB were backing it just clinched it for us.

"We used to drive up there at weekends to see how it was going and soon realised nothing was being done.

"I complained and tried to get our money back, but nothing came of it.

"Then we heard the managers of the scheme had run off and the police were involved.

"We couldn't afford to let that money go - but our solicitor said it would cost thousands of pounds to fight the case and if we lost it would mean we'd lose our house too.

"We spent ages doing as much of the leg work as we could ourselves and used the Evening Press to contact people in the same situation.

"Eventually the TSB settled out of court and I hope that opened the floodgates for other people.

"But I know a lot of people were too frightened to take on such big companies."

Keith Turner, of Hobgate, Acomb, York, was another of the lucky ones.

He lost out on the sun-soaked beaches, but managed to get back the £8,100 he had invested.

"The main attraction for us was that we thought we'd be joining a timeshare which was part of RCI, which is an international timeshare swapping club," said Mr Turner.

"We managed to get our money back because we paid the deposit by Visa and our solicitor was able to recover the rest."

For Terry Botting and his wife, Valda, who live at Skelton, Sutton Hall was to be a family retreat - enabling them to take their daughters abroad.

But the Bottings ended up forking out more than £6,000 for two weeks, self-catering in Gran Canaria."It all went sour very quickly," said Mr Botting.

"Almost from the start things weren't right - we were told there was to be swimming pool and fitness centre, which we could use at any time.

"We don't live that far away and so we thought the girls would enjoy using the facilities - but after we'd paid for our week, we were told you could only use the fitness centre for the week we'd paid for.

"We had been assured would be easy to book up holidays at timeshares abroad - it would just mean making a phone call - but it was almost impossible.

"We didn't ever have a holiday at Sutton Hall, although we were paying more than £200 a year in management costs, so after a couple of years we had stored up credit we could use for a holiday somewhere else.

"But when we came to book nothing was available.

"We had to get a senior manager involved before we could organise a couple of weeks in Gran Canaria.

"So we tried to sell the timeshare through a specialist company but they told us they had a lot of similar properties on their books, and we could not expect to get more than £900.

"In the end it was on their books for about nine months and never sold, so we just had to give it up, which meant we lost all our investment money."

DC Bryan Redshaw, who investigated the fraud, said it was estimated that investors had lost at least £200,000, in the dodgy deal, including a former miner from North Shields, who had put his life savings in the venture.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.