Brian May said his past has been “wiped out” after flash flooding destroyed his collection of memorabilia.

The Queen guitarist blamed London millionaires building “iceberg basements” for the floods.

He is “devastated” after a sewage overflow on the bottom floor of his property in Kensington  destroyed his childhood photos.

May said his wife, Anita Dobson, had “a lifetime of memorabilia on the floor of our basement – and most of it is sodden and ruined” following intense rain in the city this week.

Pedestrians waded through streets, cars were abandoned and Tube station steps engulfed by water.

May (73) blamed the deluge at his home on the local “plague” of so-called iceberg excavations in expensive boroughs.

For the past decade, rich homeowners have been digging deep into the ground to make more space in their homes.

The musician said the local council was warned years ago that deep basement extensions obstruct aquifers and “render the drainage system ineffective”.

“I’m devastated – this stuff is only ‘things’. Feels like a lot of my past has been wiped out. I’m angry,” May wrote on social media.

Basements are by their nature prone to flooding as they are the lowest level of a building and groundwater can be above the level of the basement floor.

When local sewer systems are overwhelmed, this can result in basements being covered in sewage.

But May’s objection is that the large iceberg basements block the natural flow of groundwater through the subsurface into underground aquifers.

Professor of hydrology Hannah Cloke said: “If you block the ground with impenetrable basements, that will impede the flow of water in the ground.

“However, this is not the main problem with the flash flooding in London. The problem is the localised downbursts of rain which can overwhelm the drainage systems.” (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]