A teenager told a court how he kept watch while his friend sawed up the body of a retired clergyman by torchlight.

Jason Groves, 18, described how stood just metres away from the scene in a remote woodland clearing and tried to keep calm by hitting a tree with an axe.

Meanwhile, Christopher Hunnisett, 18, spent about 45 minutes dismembering the body of the Reverend Ronald Glazebrook, 81, in the darkness, Lewes Crown Court was told.

Hunnisett then wrapped the bloody torso in a boat sail and bundled the severed limbs and head in a sail bag, it was claimed.

Groves said he could not bear to look at or carry the body but agreed to help Hunnisett drag the heavy torso up a hill to the waiting car, the court heard.

Groves said he helped Hunnisett out of friendship after his former school friend confessed to killing the Oxford-educated vicar.

He told the court: "I said to him I didn't want to see the body and he said that was fine.

"We were down in the woods where Chris was going to cut it up and I said 'I'll keep an eye out'. Then basically he started cutting it up.

"I had hold of a torch and an axe and looked in the opposite direction."

Afterwards the pair drove to Newhaven Marina and dragged the wrapped-up torso on to Mr Glazebrook's boat in the moonlight, the court heard.

Groves, who mopped up the trail of blood from the dismembered torso, said they intended to weigh it down with an anchor and drop it out at sea. But Hunnisett could not get the boat to move so a few hours later they stopped off at McDonald's with the body still in the car, the court was told.

Groves said they decided to wait until darkness to bury the body. In the meantime, the pair picked up Hunnisett's girlfriend from church and spent time in a pub, it was claimed.

At one point they opened the boot of a car revealing the dismembered foot of Mr Glazebrook to prove to another friend he was really dead, the court heard.

Groves said they hid Mr Glazebrook's legs, arms and head in a small island behind Summerfield Sports Centre in Hastings.

He said they drove around with the torso and eventually decided to dump it by the A259 Marsh Road near Eastbourne.

He told the court: "We went back to the boat and we did not have any ideas where to put it so it was carried back to the car and then we just drove around.

"Down the middle of woods there was a small stream and we both decided it would be a good idea to put it in there.

"Christopher carried the body to the small stream but it did not sink so we grabbed concrete blocks around in the rubbish and put that on top and it still did not go down so we did the same again. Then it went down."

He told the court how when Hunnisett first told him he had murdered Mr Glazebrook, he did not believe him. But then Hunnisett showed him the body in the bath at the flat in Dane Road, St Leonards.

It was naked, with his head submerged under the water and his feet hanging out by the taps, Groves said.

Hunnisett, formerly of Coventry Road, St Leonards, denies murder.

He, along with Groves, of Stonehouse Drive, St Leonards, admits conspiracy to prevent burial.

The case continues.