A TEA factory worker from Tidworth killed himself by setting his car on fire, an inquest heard.

Christopher Trowers, 58, was found dead in his badly burned Peugeot 206 on September 7 last year in a track near Somme Road, between Ludgershall and Perham Down.

An inquest into his death held at Salisbury Coroners’ Court on Wednesday heard evidence from Ian Rennie of Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Service, who said magazines and an accelerant were found underneath the driver’s seat.

Mr Trowers, of Hilltop Way, accepted voluntary redundancy from the Twinings factory in Andover in 2011.

The court heard he suffered from the lung condition pleurisy and had previously told a friend that when his redundancy money ran out he planned to kill himself as he “didn’t want his health to drag him down”.

He had also gone through periods of depression and although friends described him as an “agony aunt” they said he didn’t talk about his own problems.

One of his closest friends said he was “a genuinely nice gentleman” who had “just had enough of life”.

Mr Trowers went to the Clarendon Club in Tidworth every evening, where he helped organise poker matches, and he was described as “part of the furniture in Tidworth”.

A message saying “I love you, bye” was found at the club following his death, inside a notebook he used for poker evenings. Claire Balysz, assistant deputy coroner for Wiltshire, recorded a verdict of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.