A SELF-STYLED lord of the manor was warned today he faces a lengthy jail spell after being convicted of knowingly trying to sell a fake LS Lowry painting.

Maurice Taylor, aged 60, who bought the title Lord Taylor Windsor on the internet for £1,000, made several hundred thousand pounds and tricked auctioneers Bonhams into believing the 1964 Mill Street Scene was genuine.

He duped experts from the auctioneers into giving him red carpet treatment and a promise they would put the painting on the front cover of their Autumn 2007 auction brochure.

Taylor, who has a burglary conviction from 1989, bought the painting – by artist Arthur Delaney in Lowry's style – in 2004 for £7,500 from a gallery owner called Martin Heaps.

But Taylor, who lives in a sprawling mansion near Congleton, invented a story to improve the work's provenance and boost its value.

He told Bonhams he bought it in the late 1960s from an industrialist called Eddie Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld died in 1984 and Bonhams failed to see through the story and gave the cheat a £600,000 insurance valuation.

Taylor then used the valuation as part of a plan to fool eventual buyer David Smith, managing director of Neptune Fine Arts.

Mr Smith was so convinced by the tale and Taylor's air of respectability he agreed to purchase the painting during a meeting in a Ritz Hotel room.

It was only months later in late 2007 when Mr Smith had handed over £230,000 – none of which he got back – did he discover the snowy picture full of matchstick figures was a fake.

Today, Taylor was convicted by a jury at Chester Crown Court of six counts of fraud.

He was cleared of falsifying an invoice to aid his cover up.

The judge, Roger Dutton, told him: "You have been revealed, or the circumstances of this case as accepted by the jury, mean you are a fraud, a cheat and a thoroughly dishonest man I am afraid.

"You will have to be dealt with on March 20 for the commission of a whole series of serious offences of fraud from which you benefited very substantially.

"You gained several hundred thousand pounds out of your deception.

"You must understand when you come back for sentence you are likely to receive a significant custodial sentence."

As Taylor closed his eyes and listened, the judge ordered a pre-sentencing report, saying: "There is a lot about your background which I simply don't understand and I want some help because in my mind you are a bit of an enigma."

Taylor was given bail but ordered to surrender his passport.