A High Court judge overseeing a dispute about the ownership of a flat in Chelmsford, Essex, has given lawyers a potted history of the town's Celtic past.

Mr Justice Turner was asked to make decisions at a trial in London after Garry McClelland and David and Damien Elvin laid claims to 9 Boudicca Mews.

He decided against Mr McClelland and took the opportunity to recall the exploits of warriors from long ago.

"In 60 or 61 AD, Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, reached modern day Chelmsford through which she led her formidable army of warriors along what is now Moulsham Street as they made their destructive way from Colchester to London in their savage but ultimately doomed resistance to the might of the Roman Empire," the judge explained in a written ruling.

"Nearly 2,000 years later, doubtless inspired by this distant association with the town's Celtic past, the developers of properties located in a courtyard to the rear of 154 Moulsham Street, re-named them Boudicca Mews."

He added: "It was thus that they unwittingly set the scene for the further, but distinctly more mundane, territorial conflict which forms the subject matter of this (case)."