Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed the damage caused to his London home by the flooding that hit the UK capital earlier this week.
On Monday evening London received more than a month’s average rainfall in one day, causing flash floods on Tuesday morning that forced tube stations to close.
London Fire Brigade reported receiving over a thousand calls related to the flooding.
The flooding was concentrated around the London boroughs of Richmond and Kingston, home to some of Britain’s wealthiest celebrities.
One such celeb affected by the flooding was May, whose Kensington home was subjected to significant water damage.
The 73-year-old guitarist arrived home after a day out to find his house partially submerged.
“After a nice day at The Royal Holloway College, we came back to horror in our house,” May wrote on his Instagram account.
The rocker uploaded a video of the damage and provided details in a caption.
“The whole bottom floor had been inundated with a sewage overflow – which has covered our carpets, rugs and all kinds of precious (to us) things in a stinking sludge,” the caption read.
“It’s disgusting, and actually quite heartbreaking,” May continued. “It feels like we have been invaded, desecrated.”
“Anita had a lifetime of memorabilia on the floor of our basement – and most of it is sodden and ruined,” May wrote, describing the damage to his wife Anita Dobson’s collection of memorabilia.
“I had rescued all my most treasured childhood photo albums and scrapbooks from my studio house because it was threatened with a forest fire some months ago. Where did I put it all for safety? In the basement here in Kensington. Irony. Today it turned into a sodden mess,” the guitarist lamented. “I’m devastated – this stuff is only ‘things’ – but it feels like Back to the Future when the photograph fades – feels like a lot of my past has been wiped out.”
Describing himself as “angry,” May went on to lay the blame at the feet of the local council.
“Historically, for 150 years, Kensington has never flooded due to rainwater. Why did this happen?” he asked. “It’s almost certainly the result of all the basement building that has been plaguing this area for the past 10 years. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council was warned years ago that sinking so many deep basement extensions would obstruct the aquifers underneath our living space and render the drainage system ineffective.”
Continuing with his tirade, May compared his council’s inaction to the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
“These are the same people who scandalously allowed the wrong cladding to be put on Grenfell Tower leading to the loss of so many lives,” he wrote. “The same people who allowed a vast area at the end of Kensington High street historic buildings to allow the building of the – 1, Palace Gate monstrosity by developers – in spite of almost the whole population of Kensington objecting. The same council that has allowed selfish basement building bastards to ruin the lives of residents for endless years with the noise, pollution and destruction of our habitat by purely speculative basement construction.”
May concluded by saying he holds the council responsible “for all the misery that is going on in my neighbourhood tonight,” and that he believes “it’s time they were held to account.”
A spokesperson for the council denied that the flooding was connected to basement building.
