A FORMER headmaster was jailed for six months yesterday after he fleeced more than £26,000 from his village church funds to pay off rising debts.

Church treasurer Martin Wagstaff, 56, began dipping into the funds at medieval Ryton Parish Church after he was forced to leave his job suffering from health problems.

The former pillar of the community has now lost everything in his quest to keep up the standard of living he enjoyed as a headmaster.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that he deceived his own wife into countersigning church cheques, which he used to pay the mortgage on his family's £140,000 Victorian townhouse in the village of Ryton, Tyne and Wear, as well as credit cards debts and money due to loan companies.

The court heard how Wagstaff was appointed church treasurer in April 1998 and was sole holder of the cheque book for meeting church expenses.

After being made redundant from his £28,000-a-year job at Archbishop Runcie Church of England First School, in Gosforth, Newcastle, in August 1997, he found himself unable to live in the style to which he had become accustomed.

But he carried on spending and, faced with rising debts, began to pilfer the funds of the village church. Over two-and-a-half years, he took about £26,627, the court heard.

Peter Walsh, mitigating, said that Wagstaff's problems arose from both his elderly parents suffering ill-health at their home in Southport, Lancs. As their only child, he made frequent visits to look after them.

Judge David Wood said: "You were in a position of considerable trust and I do not think it needs me to explain to you or anyone else that the finances of the church are in a pretty perilous state."