A family forced an intruder to surrender when they grabbed a wooden sword and trapped him in their home.

Student Nicholas Devenish raised the alarm when he awoke to find a man in his third-floor bedroom.

The raider had climbed scaffolding at the back of a neighbour's home, stepped on to a fire escape and crept in through an open window.

Mr Devenish, 19, of Brunswick Place, Hove, said: "I woke to find this man sitting on the window ledge with his feet on my bed.

"He told me to be quiet because he was being chased. I was still half asleep and did not fully realise what was happening."

The Sussex University physics student stumbled out of his room and met his care worker mother, Vanessa, in the hallway.

Mrs Devenish shouted for her husband Graham and the couple, along with Nicholas and his brothers Alexander, 16, and Lawrence, who is 15 today, followed him downstairs.

She said: "Alexander grabbed a replica Roman sword he had bought at a medieval fair at the weekend.

"We knew that the intruder could not get out of the house because all the doors are mortise locked.

Mr Devenish found the man hiding in the shower room and held on to him as his wife alerted police.

He said: "We told him that all the doors were locked and that there was no way he could get out.

"He seemed to accept that he had been caught and that his only option was to wait for the police. They arrived within three minutes."

Inspector Mark Powles said: "It must have been a bit of a shock for the family to find someone in their home at that time of the day.

"It was probably a bigger shock for the intruder to find himself locked inside with no way out and surrounded by the occupants."

A man was last night helping police with their inquiries in connection with the incident, which happened at 7.20am yesterday.