ARSONISTS are being blamed for a £500,000 blaze which wrecked three barns and three adjoining fruit cold stores.

Farmer Stewart Wood watched as his lifetime’s work went up in flames in the early hours of Saturday.

Mr Wood, 62, of Teynham Court Farm, Conyer Road, Teynham, near Sittingbourne, said as he watched firefighters still damping down later that day: “The buildings were all insured - but that’s not the point. I came here in 1968 and built all those buildings and now they are gone thanks to the arsonists.

“I am convinced the fire was started deliberately because there were three separate areas of flames alongside the barns - and someone had started my nearby tractor.

“The barns contained 3,200 bales of hay and 360 bales of straw - much of which had been destined for stables across north Kent . We had worked our backs out collecting it all in - and now it’s all ruined.

“The cold stores were due to contain all our apple and fruit crops which are about to be harvested so now we will have to find another farm to store them all.

“My partner Gail had gone out to check the horses about an hour before the fire started and everything seemed fine then. It was shortly after 1am when I was woken by a telephone call to say there was a fire.

"It soon turned into a raging inferno. But I would like to praise the firefighters for stopping it spreading to another large barn.”

Teynham’s part-time firefighters were first on the scene and a total of six appliances were called to deal with the blaze.

Leading firefighter Julian Hartley, from Teynham fire station, said: “We managed to stop it spreading to another large barn - and the farmhouse could have caught alight if the wind had been in the other direction. We are definitely treating this as doubtful origin.”

He added: "We also had to deal with the added danger of the asbestos barn roofs because they started exploding with the heat."

As he spoke smoke from the blaze billowed across nearby St Mary’s Church.