Walkies saved me from blaze that wrecked my home, says Meg Mathews

Meg Mathews today told of her lucky escape from a fire which almost destroyed her Primrose Hill home.

Neighbours told how they feared their own homes would be engulfed by the flames such was the intensity of the fire and the thick black smoke pouring from the £1.6 million house in north London.

Four fire engines and more than a dozen firefighters spent almost an hour trying to control the blaze, which is thought to have been caused by an electrical fault in the kitchen.
Mathews, 45, and her daughter, Anais, 11, whose father is Mathews's ex-husband Oasis star Noel Gallagher, have not been able to return to their home. The fire wrecked the ground floor and also damaged upstairs bedrooms.

The designer told the Standard how she and her daughter were out with their two dogs when the fire broke out on November 6.

Mathews said: "It's terrifying to think what would have happened if we had been at home at the time. It was a Sunday afternoon and it just so happened that we were out with the dogs. We could easily have been at home. It's obviously upsetting to come back and see your home and your possessions ruined. But my absolute first priority is my daughter and my pets. I can only be thankful that they are safe. And I can't praise the firefighters - Green watch from Belsize Park - enough. Without them there probably wouldn't be anything left standing."

Mathews is hopeful of being able to move back into the property but it is likely to require extensive work to make it habitable. The interior designer moved to the three-bedroom home in 2007 after selling her £3.5 million five-storey terrace house in Regent's Park Road, saying she wanted to downsize after her divorce.

In an interview with the Standard Mathews referred to her new home as her "pop box". She designed the interior herself, abandoning the rock gothic style of her old home for something simpler - apart from her living room, which had one wall covered in her own wallpaper featuring huge pineapples in fluorescent colours .

The former party planner is planning to add a line of bespoke furniture to her collection of wallpaper and scarves sold in Liberty.