A SPITEFUL husband burned down his own Kennford home three days before it was due to be sold to stop his estranged wife getting her half share of it.

John McCorry did not want to leave the 200-year-old cottage in the pretty Devon village but his wife Hilary got a court order to force its sale.

He used a blowtorch to start a fire in a workshop at the back of the house which was next to a storage area full of propane gas cannisters.

He set light to the building and then sat in his favourite chair drinking whiskey in the garden as the flames took hold.

He did not try to fight the fire or call 999 and when a neighbour asked what he was doing, he replied: ‘I’m watching it burn.’

Retired carpenter McCorry, aged 75, had prevented his wife removing her furniture, including a piano, from the house earlier in the day but gave her his dog for safe keeping before he lit the blaze.

The entire village of Kennford, was sealed off as firefighters from six appliances used breathing apparatus to tackle the blaze in June last year.

They managed to prevent the gas cannisters exploding, which would have caused a massive fireball which would have destroyed the whole building.

The blaze still caused serious damage to the roof and a mezzanine floor and the wrecked building, which was about to be sold for £550,000, was so badly damaged that the charred remains have just been sold for just £320,000.

The loss was not insured because McCorry had stopped paying the premiums without telling his wife, who was living elsewhere.

McCorry, not of Lloyds Court, Exeter, admitted arson, being reckless whether life was endangered but claimed he started the blaze by accident while smoking or using a blowtorch to clean brass door handles in his workshop.

His account was dismissed by Judge Keith Cutler after a fact-finding hearing at Exeter Crown Court.

He said: ‘This is a very sad case. It may be that the drink he had taken brought on a maudlin and depressed mood and he was thinking about leaving the house he had known and loved.

‘He felt resentment about it all. This was a fire started deliberately out of animosity towards his ex-wife with the intention of burning the property down.

‘It may have been inspired by him being depressed, but that is what he did and that is why he was in the garden watching the house burn down.’

The judge adjourned sentence until August but told McCorry he is likely to go to jail.

Mr Lee Bremridge, prosecuting, said McCorry’s wife moved out about two years before the fire after ending their 30-year marriage. He remained in the listed Belford House but she moved out and went to court to force its sale.

The new owners were due to move in on June 20 but McCorry started the fire on June 17 after preventing removals men taking away furniture owned by his wife.

A blow torch was found inside the door of the workshop and an open petrol can just outside. A firefighter said only swift action prevented the house being totally destroyed.

Mrs McCorry said her husband had been drinking when she went to the house to let in the removals men but there was a delay caused by her husband calling the police to report he had found a mortar bomb.

He then pushed her out of the house and insisted she take his dog.

She said he was unhappy about their impending divorce and added: ‘It did bother him. He was also very angry that I had left him. I think he set fire to the house out of spite.’

McCorry denied starting the fire deliberately. He said he had been drinking whisky and beer during the day and had been working and smoking roll-ups in his workshop.

He said he went for a walk to the end of the garden and returned to find the workshop alight. He said he was so shocked that he could only sit and watch.

He said: ‘I did not want a divorce. I was not seeking a divorce. I did not want to move out of the house. That came from her end. I was not angry, I was upset.

‘My home life was coming apart. She had relations and children and grandchildren. I had nothing and nowhere to go. I thought I would end up in a bed and breakfast.

‘If the sale had gone through, I was due more than a quarter of a million but I didn’t have a clue when I was going to get the money. On that day I was not compos mentis.’