A palace being built by killer tycoon Nicholas Hoogstraten, which he claimed was worth more than £30 million, has been officially valued at less than £1 million.

Accountants who have been attempting to untangle the jailed landlord's complex financial empire put a price tag of just £620,000 on the unfinished mansion at Framfield, near Uckfield.

The announcement at the High Court in London yesterday came as a double blow for Hoogstraten.

Hours earlier ramblers, whom he famously described as "scum, riff-raff and the great unwashed", cut a barbed-wire fence, gaining access to a footpath running across the estate for the first time in 13 years.

The muddy track has been the focus of a spirited campaign ever since gates, fences and a mountain of fridges were piled up preventing access.

Hoogstraten, 57, received a ten-year jail sentence last year for his role in the killing of rival landlord Mohammed Raja in 1999. Raja's sons are continuing their father's legal battle for the £5 million he claimed he was owed.

The judge yesterday granted the liquidating team permission to sell off four properties to cover the spiralling costs of their investigation, which have now reached £1.25 million.

Hamilton Palace, once described as "a cross between Ceausescu's palace and a new civic crematorium", is not among the four. The judge handed back the keys to Hoogstraten's solicitors after hearing security was costing £33,000 a week.

He joked: "What are they doing there? Have they got tanks?"

Hoogstraten, who appeared to be a broken man at an earlier hearing in the ongoing action, was yesterday back to his typical form.

Dressed in a smart grey suit he frequently interrupted the proceedings attempting to correct the judge on points of law.

At one point the exasperated judge bellowed: "This is not a game of ping-pong."

The court has been told Hoogstraten is attempting to conceal his true worth by putting up a "proprietorial smokescreen."

Yesterday the judge said antiques had also been hidden.

He said: "It is quite clear from the liquidators' evidence that assets were removed from a safety deposit box and there was evidence of a large number of antiques. Where have they gone?"

Hoogstraten agreed to provide information about his assets to the court within ten days.

He said: "I am not playing games here but I have to protect my position.

"I never enter any obligation that I don't honour."

Meanwhile, at the palace, workmen began to remove obstacles that have blocked the most notorious footpath in England for more than ten years.

Watched by ramblers and officials from East Sussex County Council, the contractors started removing rubble and the two padlocked gates adorned by signs reading "Private, keep out."

Leading campaigner, Kate Ashbrook said: "This is a great day getting the path opened up at last but the county council should have done this in the beginning instead of wasting vast sums of public money in prevarication.

"We have been able to use this as an example that landowners are not able to block paths and county councils have to do their duty."

She successfully challenged in the courts an attempt by the county council to divert the path around the obstacles, which cost the authority £76,000 in legal bills.

Environment councillor Tony Reid said: "I think it is a very happy and good occasion. The good thing is, with the ramblers' help, we are able to clear it."

The work will still take an estimated three weeks.

Jack Dunn, from Buxted, first saw the barn being built on the route in 1991. He reported the obstruction to the council the following year.

He said: "We are near the end of the road and we will actually have the path restored and I am pleased with that.

"I am not very pleased with the things that have happened along the way, such as the county council getting such enormous legal bills.

"If it had not been opened, it would be a signal landowners can get away with it."

Hamilton Palace was conceived as the most palatial manor house built in the 20th Century with solid marble floors and oak doors, as well as two whole floors to house the tycoon's extensive art collection.

Hoogstraten even designed a mausoleum in the east wing so he could spend 5,000 years sealed in an impregnable tomb, locked away from the "riff raff", as he frequently referred to the rest of society.