ONE of the owners of a popular waterside restaurant has vowed to be back in business this week after it was damaged by fire.

Firefighters were called to the Beach House restaurant on the harbour side of Mudeford sandbank at 6.35pm on Friday evening.

Crews from Christchurch, Springbourne, Redhill Park and Poole attended and firefighters had to cut away the roof in order to ventilate the premises.

The fire affected the rear kitchen, restaurant and a storage area. No one was on site at the time as staff had already left the restaurant between 4.30pm and 5pm.

Firefighters used 12 breathing sets of apparatus and three main lines to extinguish the fire with the final crew leaving the scene at 10.34pm.

One appliance returned to the site on Saturday to carry out further inspections to ensure there were no residual hotspots. The restaurant was closed for business over the weekend but received dozens of messages of support from customers on its Facebook page .

Jeremy Carpenter, director of the Beach House, said: “The damage is pretty bad. There’s a lot of smoke damage, a lot of water damage and there’s a great big new skylight in the roof which firemen had to make to put it out safely. The damage is pretty extensive. It’s quite bad.

“However, the outside of the restaurant in the conservatory area is pretty much untouched, a little bit of smoke damage which we can clean up, so what I’m hoping to do is I’m going to hire a coffee trailer, a little kiosk, I’m going to get some power sorted for it, then I can still serve hot drinks, snacks, crisps, mulled wine, something like that, and then potentially open the front of the restaurant. The message we want to get to people is the damage is pretty bad but next week you’ll still be able to come down and get a hot chocolate or some sort of refreshment.”

Mr Carpenter praised the emergency services and said the cause of the fire was not yet known but he had been told by a fire inspector that the fire started outside the restaurant and worked its way in.

He added: “We’ll get a move on and get it repaired ASAP so there shouldn’t be much disruption really. We’ll jump on it and get it open. A lot of people, you look at the comments and stuff, they really do have an affiliation and a love for coming down here so we need to get it open do some sort of service for people.

“My friends have been offering to help with clearing up which is great. I’ve got a good little team here at the moment. We were here at the crack of dawn and it's just getting it all tidy, safe and secure so it doesn’t look too much of an eyesore for people as well. We’re on it.”

The Beach House restaurant is the sister restaurant to The Boathouse on Christchurch Quay which suffered a serious fire in 2013.

That fire was caused by a build up of combustibles in the restaurant’s extraction unit with the eatery re-opening just 24 hours after the blaze tore a hole in its roof.