A masked robber hit a brave cash delivery worker with a handgun after he refused to hand over a cash box containing £45,000, a court heard today.

Terrance Clark, 50, and his son Lewis Clark, 27, from Battersea, stand accused of conspiracy to commit robbery and having an imitation firearm with criminal intent.

The cash delivery worker was attacked while replenishing a cash machine at a Co-op in Tattenham Crescent, Tattenham Corner, just after 10am on Wednesday January 30, last year.

Prosecutor Ian Hope told Guildford Crown Court that a robber confronted him and demanded the cash box outside the shop.

But Mr Hope said: "He did not hand the box over. The male, with a mask or balaclava, was faced with an immediate problem.

"He had a gun and turned the gun on its side…and pulled the trigger. It did not fire. It may well be it was not a real gun."

The attempt to "terrorise" the cash delivery man, who had been in the army for 24 years, failed and he still did not give up the cash box containing £20 notes.

Pointing to himself, Mr Hope told the jury: "The gunman used the gun to beat him in this area here under the visor toward the face."

The beaten man fell to the floor in pain while the robber jumped in a getaway car and escaped. Mr Hope said: "They got away with what seems to be at first blush a very professional job.

"The robbers did not leave a lot of clues or a lot of evidence at the scene of the robbery. It was a very well planned operation."

But police found the getaway car, a cream Chevrolet stolen from Putney, with false number plates.

Mr Hope said the same car was caught on camera on the A240 on January 15, 2013, with Terrance Clark’s car behind in convoy.

He said "painstaking telephone analysis" showed his son called from nearby at the time while both of them had been in Tadworth on Wednesday mornings and Tuesdays in January.

He said a laptop from the son’s partner’s home revealed search terms related to grabbing secure boxes while the defendants appear to have had come into money in February.

He added: "When you put all that together you are not talking about coincidence."

The father and son live in Thessaly Road on the Patmore Estate. The case continues tomorrow in front of Judge R Fraser.