A young businesswoman was found drowned in a hot-tub in the family home's garden three days after she vanished, a coroner heard on Thursday.

Ella-Louise Tunney, 26, had accidentally fallen in the tub when she suffered an epileptic fit as she prepared the water for an afternoon soak during a hot summer's day.

She had been diagnosed with epilepsy as a teenager but had always managed to keep it under control with medication until November 2017 when its severity began to increase and she suffered black outs, once having to be dragged out of the bath by a colleague on a work trip.

However, when she disappeared on Saturday, June 23, her father, Lee Tunney, assumed she had gone to sleep in the annexe which she lived in 60 yards from the main house at the back of the garden of the family property in Eton Wick Road, Eton Wick.

By Monday June 25, Mr Tunney was desperately searching a field across the road from his home with the family dog, looking for his daughter.

He told the inquest: “Ella was expecting friends around in the afternoon of Saturday June 23 to play in the garden in the hot tub. Ella asked me to set the hot tub up, which I did. I went out during the day and when I came back there was no sign of anyone in the kitchen, her handbag and phone I think were on the side."

By Monday morning, he called Ms Tunney’s place of work, Alpha FX, where she worked as head of settlements and found they also had not heard from her, leading him to file a missing person report with the police.

Police Constable Mohammed Sajad from Thames Valley Police arrived at 10.15am.

He told assistant coroner Emma Jones: “We were going back through the garden to the main house, when I remembered Mr Tunney mentioned to me the last time he saw her was on the Saturday and she was preparing the hot tub. Something caught my eye in the pool, my first thought was, ‘no, it can’t be’. I stepped away to have a look.”

When PC Sajad and Mr Tunney pulled back the floating cover on the hot tub, they found Ms Tunney lying face down under the water, her skin very pale and wrinkled.

The assistant coroner returned a verdict of accidental death.