Smiling on the surface: Ben Miller-Poole in his shop

HUNDREDS of Sylvanian Families toys were destroyed as the iconic Islington shop was caught up in the Finsbury Park flooding.

Ben Miller-Poole was horrified when we walked down to the basement of the Mountgrove Road shop, where they keep their stock, and found a pool of water rapidly rising, last Tuesday.

He desperately scrambled around trying to save the little figurine animals who have acquired international fame making the shop a site of pilgrimage for schoolchildren. However, about 70 per cent of the stock was engulfed by the murky water.

“It was a horrible, horrible day,” he said. “I was running about in bare feet trying to move stuff higher up. I don’t think any of us had any idea it was going to rise so high. Maybe a couple of inches off the floor, but this was three feet, four feet, five feet; it just kept going.”

The water came from a huge 36-inch burst main pipe in Queens Drive. It tumbled down and pooled behind the Sylvanian Families store in Cobble Mews, sending gallons gushing into nearby homes and shops.

Up to 250 homes were damaged and about 60 people had to be rehoused.

The shop has 400 lines on Sylvanian Families, 100 lines of Li’l Woodzeez characters and 500 lines of dolls’ house miniatures. Extra stock had been taken into the shop ahead of the October half-term holiday and Christmas.

As the water continued to rise in the basement, Mr Miller-Poole had to give up on the remain­ing figurine toys and turn off the electricity.

Mr Miller-Poole, who has worked in Sylvanian Families for 15 years, said: “We turned everything off and just sat here in the dark just hoping that it would stop soon. There were loads of fire engines and people running around trying to block it off.”

Some parents looked on in horror when they saw scores of water-damaged dolls piled up outside the shop to be taken away and destroyed.

But Mr Miller-Poole said the toys had been contaminated by the water and he wouldn’t want children to touch them and get ill.

Contractors have been brought in to drain the basement, but it will take three months to fully dry out. “As long as we submit proof of cost for everything that was damaged, as far as I understand, we are covered,” he said. “It will be reimbursed in due course, but again that is a long process. We will have to live off our own finances until that time.”

He added: “The Sylvanian Families are always happy and we want to keep that spirit. So we are smiling on the surface even though behind the scenes it is still relative chaos.”