Berwyn Book: “So much history that was preserved within our warehouse has all gone”

Hundreds of thousands of books including some dating back centuries were destroyed in the devasting fire at Berwyn Books shop in Buckley earlier this week.

A huge fire broke out at the large commercial warehouse on Spencers Industrial Estate

Eight fire appliances attended the blaze involving two units at the industrial estate just after 5pm on Wednesday.

At the height of the incident up to 50 firefighters battled the blaze.

Following the fire, the owners told followers on social media: “We’d love to tell you it was only a small incident, but unfortunately that’s not the case.”

“The fire spread across the whole premises. We don’t really know what to say, except everything’s gone.”

“As of now, everything is on hold, and we don’t know what is going to be happening in the future.”

The building has now been condemned.

Just seeing the rubble and the books and everything charred, it’s very sad.

I think we’re still reeling from the impact and the shock of it all really.
(Jane Suttcliffe Berwyn Book)

Around 400,000 books are estimated to have been destroyed in the blaze.

Speaking to BBC Wales, Emma Littler from Berwyn Books said: “There is nothing left, the flames were that high in the sky, there’s no salvaging anything.”

“The historical value to what has been lost, we can’t price that.”

“There is stuff that is irreplaceable, there are genuine pieces of history.”

“The monetary value is just not enough to describe how much has been lost.”

“For example, we had a book that landed on my desk over the weekend that was signed by Queen Victoria.”

Emma continued: “We had a lot of things from the world wars, and there was letters, journals, diaries from the Victorian era.”

“We had Bibles dating back to the 1700’s.”

“There is so much history and artefacts really that were preserved within our warehouse and that will be looked after and it’s gone.”

Lauren Simcott, a customer at Berwyn Books, has started a fundraiser in the hope of raising some to money for the staff.

A GoFundMe page has been set up by customer Lauren Simcott, she said: “I only discovered Berwyn Books this year but I loved every visit and I know I’m amongst a large community that is heartbroken for the owners and staff.”

“I know that they will have insurance that will eventually pay out, but I’ve set up this GoFundMe to help the staff get through this trying time, especially before Christmas.”