SOME of the finest works of British contemporary art have been destroyed after a fire at a warehouse containing pieces owned by Charles Saatchi and possibly items from the Buckingham Palace and Royal Academy collections.

Works worth millions of pounds including Tracey Emin’s tent entitled Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, are feared lost in the blaze which ripped through storage buildings in Leyton, East London, early on Monday morning.

Such was the ferocity of the blaze that Momart, the warehouse owner, has been unable to identify exactly which works have been lost, but Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Hell is believed to be another of the key works destroyed.

A spokesman for Charles Saatchi said that the multimillionaire collector was distraught: “It is terrible. A significant part of the work in his collection has been affected. We are hoping it is not as bad as early reports suggested.”

Mr Saatchi bought Hell, a tableau of mutilated toy soldiers, for £500,000. He is believed to have spent £40,000 on Ms Emin’s tent.

Carole Hastings, director of Momart, said the 10,000 sq ft warehouse — between 5 and 10 per cent of the company’s storage — had been wiped out. “Obviously works have been lost but until we can confirm more, it’s probably wrong to comment,” she said.

“If the fire has been burning since Monday, there’s not going to be anything we can retrieve. I don’t think that anything will have survived.”

Momart’s private clients include Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, whose cast of the inside of a house won the Turner Prize in 1993. It also handles works from foreign museums including the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Met.

Last night Dinos Chapman said of Hell, perhaps his most famous work. “It was the only one of its kind — you can’t copy it. It would be impossible to remake it.

“I think it is not a very good idea to store art next to a place where flammable gases are kept,” he added.

Hirst was last night said to be desperately trying to find out which of his works had been lost. His mother, Mary Brennan, told The Times: “I rang him this morning and spoke to him. There was a lot of his stuff in there, he wasn’t happy.”

Franky Dunphy, Hirst’s sales manager, said that the artist used Momart to store his trademark spin paintings and spot paintings. “Some stuff has been lost but we are still trying to get the details,” he said.

“We don’t know whether his works were in that specific building but we use Momart to store his pictures and the odd sculpture.”

Other works thought to have been consumed were significant pieces by Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume.

More than 80 firefighters fought the blaze at an industrial estate in Leyton, which has gutted a range of single-storey factory units. They were called at 3.40am on Monday to a fire covering an area the size of a football pitch.

At least 15 fire engines were needed at the scene. A cordon was established and fire crews were forced to fight the fire from a safe distance after a number of potentially explosive acetylene cylinders were discovered.

Fire crews were still at the scene last night, damping down small pockets of fire and turning over hot embers.

A London Fire Brigade spokesman said: “A range of industrial units have been gutted. But we don’t know what is in them. There is 100 per cent damage which must mean they have been completely gutted. Once the fire is out, we will go in and look.”

Not all artists were upset by the news, however. Sebastian Horsley, a British artist best known for crucifying himself in the Philippines, said: “Why does it really matter? As far as I’m concerned, it has done millions of pounds of good. Most of the art in there is intrinsically worthless.

“Damien’s is the only stuff that is any good. It’s a marketing con, all artificially boosted up. Good riddance to it.”

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