London, April 10: Bleak House, the former home of Charles Dickens, has been partially destroyed by fire.

The imposing hilltop building at Broadstairs, Kent, which takes its name from the Dickens novel of the same name, caught fire last night.

The house, where the novelist wrote David Copperfield, was once a Dickens museum but is now privately owned.

The family who occupy it were not home at the time.

The fire is thought to have started in a first-floor bedroom at the back of the house. Part of the bedroom floor caved in, damaging valuable artefacts in the snooker room below.

Firemen, met by flames billowing from the windows, salvaged as many of the family’s belongings as possible.

Darren Harvey, Kent fire and rescue service station manager, said: “Officers were faced with tremendous heat, extreme smoke levels and visibility was nil. “We did have good local knowledge. One of the guys knew there were two staircases.”

A team of around 40 firemen extinguished the blaze within an hour. Investigators are now trying to discover how the fire started.

Bleak House’s owners were made aware of the outbreak and returned briefly later in the night to see the damage. They are understood to have taken refuge at a relative’s house.

Bleak House, which was originally called Fort House, was built in 1801 for the captain of the fort which stood in front of it.