A man’s retirement project went up in smoke after a large fire in Moulton Chapel on Tuesday afternoon.
Paul Baggaley (61) had been watching TV in his workshop to the back of their Moulton Chapel Road home when he’d popped out for a cup of tea at around 1pm.
He then heard a bang and found the workshop he had built himself in flames.
Paul has been an engineer all of his life having retired six years ago from Perkins in Peterborough.
He said: “I took early retirement and these were all my play things.”
“That was 30 years of my tools that’s destroyed.
“There were bits of classic cars and bits of machines I was working on in there.
“I’d built the building myself – that’s why it’s not fallen down!
“I was in the workshop with the TV on when my partner Pauline called me for a cup of tea.
“We first heard something exploding and the next thing we knew it was alight.”
Two fire crews from Spalding, one from Donington and one from Market Deeping attended the blaze and stopped it spreading to Paul’s home just metres away.
He said: “What can you do? No-one’s been hurt, so that’s the main thing.”