The husband of a woman accused of plotting with her lover to kill him has told of being badly burned when a boiler heating his swimming pool exploded.

Ray Weatherall, who was shot in the face as he chopped down branches at Sandwich marina, said he suffered extensive burns to his body.

It was the second year, he said, that he had fired up the solid fuel heater at his home in Ash, and there had previously been no problem with it.

“I was stood about four or five feet away from the boiler and there was this almighty bang,” he told a jury. “The door of it blew open and I was covered with kindling (wood) and the remains of the lighter fluid.

“I caught alight, who knows how. I was ablaze in as many seconds as you could ever imagine. I hit the deck and rolled and rolled. No way was it going out. My jacket and shoulders were alight.

“I staggered for the pool. I managed to get one leg over the pool. My son Sam came screaming over and pushed me over the edge of the pool, which is what put me out.”

Mr Weatherall, 53, was taken to the QEQM Hospital in Margate and then transferred to the burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, where he was treated for about five days.

While there, he was visited by his wife Hayley and best friend Glenn Pollard, who were to become lovers.

Maidstone Crown Court has heard there were other failed attempts on his life by Hayley Weatherall, Pollard and his daughter Heather before he was hit by a “sniper shot”.

As well as the explosion, there were plans to drown Mr Weatherall, who is terminally ill with a brain tumour and has diabetes, at sea while fishing and to poison him, it was alleged.

Prosecutor Simon Taylor told the jury: “The central allegation in this case is that in the months between the summer of 2017 and early spring of 2018, each of these three defendants agreed that Raymond Weatherall should be murdered, and each of them took steps to carry out that agreement,” said prosecutor Simon Taylor.

“These steps went beyond mere planning and culminated in serious attempts on Mr Weatherall’s life. Fortunately, their planning and subsequent efforts to murder him were unsuccessful.”

Glenn Pollard, 49, Heather Pollard, 20, both of Church Lane, West Stourmouth, near Canterbury, and Wetherall, 32, of Molland Lee, Ash, all deny conspiracy to murder.

Mr Taylor said the motive for wanting to kill Mr Weatherall was his wife’s affair with Pollard, assisted by his daughter, who calls herself Arthur and was described as “a real daddy’s girl” who idolised her father.

“It seems that Glen Pollard didn’t feel he could accomplish this goal on his own and so he recruited his seemingly devoted daughter to assist them on their mission,” he told the jury of eight men and four women.

Attempts on Mr Weatherall’s life were passed off as accidents, unfortunate events or harmless coincidences.

It was only when he was shot in the face – the bullet passing through his right cheek and out of the left cheek - on November 29 last year that the police became more involved.

Even at the point of the shooting the trail remained cold until the affair was revealed in January this year. It was then that the bigger picture emerged, said Mr Taylor.

Hayley and Raymond Weatherall married in December 2015 and had three children together.

He had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in August 2015. He was also diabetic and needed daily insulin injections.

Mr Weatherall and Glenn Pollard had been friends for about 30 years and went shooting together. Pollard also legitimately owned guns.

His daughter had known Mr Weatherall all her life and called him Uncle Ray. She had access to her father’s firearms kept unsecured at their home and was aware of her father’s affair with Weatherall.

The shooting happened at the marina when Mr Weatherall was working at a boatyard by the River Stour with his son Sam and daughter Jade, cutting branches from a tree.

Across the boatyard was grassland and a gravel path. “It might be said to be an ideal place for a gunperson to conceal themselves,” said Mr Taylor.

Mr Weatherall was standing by the riverbank when he was hit. The bullet entered his right cheek between his temple and jaw. Despite the injury, he remained conscious.

Heather Pollard, who calls herself Arthur, was found to have parked her Citroen car close to the marina at 8.29am. She drove off at 2.08pm – six minutes after the shooting was reported to police.

The trial continues.