RETIRED teacher Peter Grice died as the result of head injuries sustained in a heavy fall on stairs at his home in Hargrove Avenue, Padiham.

Mr Grice, 72, fell from a flight of six steps into a heavy bookcase on the middle landing, an inquest at Burnley was told.

Noreen Grice said her husband went to bed at 1.30am on Saturday, December 8, but got up again a short time later.

She was half asleep when she heard a thud. She thought it might be their rather neurotic cat knocking something over but her son told her Peter had fallen.

She saw him on the landing below the top flight of stairs and realised immediately it was serious.

She said two pieces of the heavy wooden bookcase were "gone" and it seemed to her that he had suffered a sudden collapse, a horrible accident.

He had made occasional complaints about feeling dizzy.

Pathologist, Dr Abdul Al-Dawoud said Mr Grice had suffered brain injuries but there was no fracture of the skull.

It was a bad fall in which the brain had been rotated inside the skull causing damage.

One of the arteries to his heart was blocked 80 per cent which may have explained the dizzy spells but not necessarily so. Cause of death, he said, was head injuries.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, acting East Lancashire Coroner Richard Taylor expressed his condolences to the family and said: "For some reason he got up, overbalanced and fell very heavily."