A NORTH Yorkshire stablelad risked lives when he torched his former neighbour's home on Grand National day, a court heard.

Stephen Shane Peirson left his victim, Wayne Jervis, with only the clothes he stood up in after the alleged arson attack on his ground-floor bedroom, said Fiona Dix-Dyer, opening the prosecution at York Crown Court.

Mr Jervis was out at the time of the blaze in a terraced block of one-room lodgings in Vine Street, Norton, but neighbours of his were at home.

She alleged that Peirson, 44, wrote a letter to Malton detectives confessing to starting the fire and a separate blaze at Edgerton Stud, in Cambridgeshire.

He told police he had wanted to take revenge on Mr Jervis for an attack on his friend Christopher Patchett, known as "Lester".

But when Peirson went into the witness box at York Crown Court, he alleged that he had not started either blaze and had only 'confessed' to get help because he suffered from premonitions.

Peirson, of Old Maltongate, Malton, denies arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

The jury was today expected to retire to consider its verdict.

Miss Dix-Dyer alleged that heat from the fire at 7 Vine Street, Norton, on April 7, 2001, was so great that the walls of an adjoining house grew hot and residents there turned down their radiator.

Neighbour Gary McSherry raised the alarm at 7.30pm when he left his home to go to a Indian restaurant and noticed smoke. The prosecution alleges the fire had been started 45 minutes earlier when neighbours heard banging from Mr Jervis' s room.

Peirson said that he used to live at 7 Vine Street, but moved out after two weeks because he did not like Mr Jervis.

On Grand National day, after drinking and watching the race at the Derwent Arms pub, he had gone to the lodgings to alert others in the house that "people from Leeds" were coming to "sort out" Mr Jervis.

When he looked in Mr Jervis's room, he saw that it had been wrecked.

He said that he posted a letter in August 2001 at Gatwick Airport falsely confessing to starting the fire and that he handed himself in to police on October 15, 2002, after his return to the country, because he needed help.

He told the jury he had had premonitions since 1968 and no one would listen to him.

"The only reason I am here is because I put myself here," he told the jury.

Det Sgt Ian Fieldsend, of Malton CID, accepted that there was no forensic evidence against Peirson.

The hearing continues.

Updated: 10:40 Thursday, April 03, 2003