A wall that showed the handprints of Grenfell Tower victims who were trapped in the building as the fire raged has been destroyed.
Families of the 72 people who died in the 2017 fire in North Kensington, west London, made the unsettling discovery of the wall, between the 12th and 14th floors, during pre-demolition visits to the building in July last year.
A powerful photo of the stairwell shows the area totally blackened with smoke – and marked with prints of all different sizes.
The victims’ families had urged the Government to keep these parts of the building from being demolished.
But they were preparing to take Housing Secretary Steve Reed to court over the demolition after claims that Angela Rayner promised the wall would not be destroyed when she ran the department.
Relatives have said the Government went back on its promise.
The fierce fire ripped through the 24-storey social housing block in North Kensington, west London, on June 14, 2017, killing 72 people.
The tragedy sparked national outrage, as highly flammable exterior cladding was found to have caused the rapid spread of flames from an electrical fault.
The Grenfell Inquiry began in earnest in September 2017, with the final report issued in February 2025, before demolition began that September.
Another part of the tower has also been destroyed, on the stairwell between the 17th and 18th floor, where the words Allahu Akbar – which means ‘God is Greater’ – were written.
An official said no sections above the ninth floor could be kept, citing concerns about the sensitivity of the upper levels and the lives lost.
Both the handprints and the inscription are located above this level.
The Arabic writing has already been destroyed – but grieving families are now fighting to preserve the handprints.
Damel Carayol, who lost members of his family in the fire, told The Telegraph: ‘The obvious thing is that these inscriptions and handprints are relics, reminiscent of hieroglyphics and remains from traumatic historical happenings.
‘The meanings and symbolisms of whoever made them would have been their last hopeful messages to the living world, as they felt for sure that their time had come. And these messages to us speak for everyone whose lives were taken at Grenfell.’
He added that the ‘disregard’ for the victims and their families was ‘inhumane’.
I’m not sure why anybody would want to preserve this – it feels rather macabre and creepy, but different people mourn in different ways.
It’s also time to rebuild because homes are desperately needed, so new homes should be built, but please, not another tower block for this to happen again – that would be a tragedy waiting to happen. What’s more, there should be a memorial nearby so that people don’t forget the disaster that did happen – it’s the least thing they could do for the people who died that day.
I wouldn’t say it’s ghoulish to keep a memory, far from it, because if it were thought of as ghoulish, then perhaps the Tower of London should be ripped down or Hampton Court Palace, although some might say that’s a ridiculous comparison.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 