A BYFLEET councillor who lost her family antiques in the Access Self Storage fire said she has “nothing to pass on to anybody” after the devastating blaze.

The storage warehouse in Oyster Lane Byfleet was wrecked by a fire that started on the evening of Thursday 18 May, with firefighters on the scene for several days.

Amanda Boote, a Woking borough and Surrey county councillor, said the more she delved into remembering which items were in there, the more painful it became.

She spoke at the county council’s annual meeting to praise the efforts of Surrey Fire and Rescue Service crews.

Cllr Boote lost antique clocks that her father had collected, as well as furniture passed on by her great grandparents.

With no place for them in her modern house, she had the items – along with some artworks and “lots of sentimental things that that you could never go and buy again” – in a storage unit.

She said: “A lot of those things I remember back in my great grandparents’ house, or my grandma’s house, my parents’ house and all of those people are not with us anymore.

“It’s a connection with them as well. I think the emotional devastation is much worse.”

Cllr Boote said she had lost items from different generations on both sides of her family.

“I’ve got nothing to pass on to anybody now, it is all my family history,” she added.

The scene of the fire is now being investigated to determine the cause, but Cllr Boote, who represents The Byfleets on the county council and Byfleet and West Byfleet on the borough, is calling for more information from Access Self Storage.

She said the one phone call and two “cold” and “generic” emails from the company didn’t do enough to let people know what the next steps would be.

She said people were worried and quite upset about the communications from the company and wanted to hear more about insurance.

“Will we be able to go down and look for things?” Cllr Boote added. “Or will someone actually go through everything to see if there are any remnants that can be saved?

“We’re just not getting any information like that at the moment.”

She couldn’t go and buy replacements for many of the items that were in her storage unit, and wouldn’t want to, because the emotional attachment was the important thing.

“I’m not going to go out and buy another antique clock because it won’t mean anything to me.

“And it won’t have been given to me by my family who are not with us anymore.”

Having heard that “99 per cent” of what was in the building has been lost, Cllr Boote also said her partner had lost “everything” in the fire, having put furniture, clothes, photographs and more into storage when they moved in together during the coronavirus pandemic.

With a “really strong community” in Byfleet that “rallies round whenever anything happens” Cllr Boote said children had taken biscuits to the firefighters.

The Corner Stop Cafe in Oyster Lane had made bacon sandwiches and given out coffee, at a time when it was unable to open to the public.