A MAN at the centre of a police siege in a Golborne terraced street denied sprinkling petrol around his home or threatening to burn police.

At Bolton Crown Court, Alun Evans also denied threatening to blow the entire street up by igniting the petrol and said he had not shouted abuse at officers surrounding his home.

Evans, 32, said the first he knew that police were in the area was when he saw two officers inside his house. But Evans claimed that when they saw him coming from the kitchen, they left the house quickly.

He said an axe found in the house was used to chop wood for a coal fire, and knives found stuck in the wallpaper had been used as wallpaper scrapers. He also denied threatening to dive out of the bedroom window and head-butt police.

Earlier, the court had heard police had gone to Evans's home to speak to him about alleged assaults on a pub landlord who had barred him from the Sir Charles Napier, in Golborne.

But when they arrived, Evans allegedly barricaded himself in and threatened to set his house on fire. He told officers who tried to get in that he had five gallons of petrol on his landing and would throw it over them and set them alight. He threatened to set fire to his house and take the whole street with him.

The stand-off was only resolved when two specialist police teams stormed the house and arrested Evans.

He is facing six charges: three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm against pub manager John Hitchmoth and a similar charge against pub owner David Reece. Evans is also charged with affray and threatening to destroy his house and putting people in fear that he would carry out his threat. He denied all the charges.

In evidence, Evans said two home-made spears found inside his house had been made by his son when he had been out playing. He denied standing outside stripped to the waist and goading police officers to come and fight him.

He said he had been outside earlier, when he went to cool down after a session on his punch-bag. Evans also denied threatening police with a firework, which he said was left over from bonfire night the previous year.

He said he had seen police officers in ordinary clothes trying to climb into his garden from his mother's property next door, and had broken the window while banging on it to attract their attention.

The trial continues.