A man threatened to "blow away" his youngest brother when a family feud broke out over their grandmother's will, a court heard.

Peter Reast, 51, knocked on his brother Graham's front door at 2am and demanded £30,000 before threatening to kill him, along with his wife and two young children, Lewes Crown Court was told.

Giving evidence on the first day of Reast's trial for blackmail, Graham Reast told jurors he did not take the threat seriously until he remembered his brother had an antique shotgun.

He called police and Reast, of Hanover Terrace, Brighton, was arrested 13 days later. He denies the charge.

The court heard how Graham, the youngest of five siblings, had lived with his grandmother Esther as a teenager, following the death of his mother in 1975.

He said he had been close to her throughout her life and offered to convert the basement of his Brighton home into a self-contained flat when she became too old to live alone.

She gave him £30,000 she had recently inherited for the work but died in January last year, aged 92, before it was completed.

When her will was read out, Graham, in his 40s, was left the bulk of the estate with the other three brothers receiving £500 and their older sister getting nothing.

The court heard Peter Reast began to pester his youngest brother with increasingly abusive phone calls until he reached the stage where he had to change his phone number.

Referring to his brother as "the defendant", Graham Reast told the court how he was woken at 2am on July 27 last year.

He said: "My daughter had been sick during the evening and I had managed to get her to go to sleep at about 1.30am.

"I heard the doorbell ring. I saw the defendant on the other side of the front door.

"I was surprised to see him at that time. He said he wanted 'a little chat'.

"I said I had nothing to say to him, especially at that time in the morning.

"He said, 'Well, it's like this. There's £30,000 missing from the estate'.

"He said he wanted it. He wanted £10,000 for Kathy, £10,000 for Greg and £10,000 for himself.

"I said I didn't understand what he was talking about and asked him to speak to my solicitors.

"They had written to him to inform him nothing was amiss. He said if I didn't give it to him he would kill me.

"I was shocked and I didn't actually believe what I heard but he repeated it half a dozen times.

"He ordered me to contact my solicitor and arrange it. I said if he and the others had paid more attention to our grandmother when she was alive, the situation wouldn't have arisen.

"He repeated he was going to kill me, my wife and my children. He said, 'I'll blow you away'.

"The defendant walked up the road. I was going to follow him but I had a small child stirring in the front room and a wife and young child upstairs.

"Just before he left, he said I had two weeks to sort it or he would come back and that time he wouldn't be talking.

"I was very concerned and contacted police first thing the next morning.

"To be threatened by a member of my own family was very disturbing."

The trial continues.