Dad’s mini-masterpiece

I WAS interested to read about the Westbook dolls’ house which is up for auction. My father, a consulting engineer, was, in the late Sixties, commissioned to electrify Queen Mary’s Doll’s House.

This had been designed in 1924 by Sir Edwin Lutyens from an idea by Princess Marie Louise, who wanted it as a gift for her childhood friend Queen Mary. The Queen had a passion for ‘tiny craft’ and, thinking the doll’s house might promote British designers, craftsmen and artists, accepted the gift.

Built on 1:12 scale, it has 40 rooms on four floors, two staircases, two lifts which stop at every floor, five bedrooms, with hot and cold running water, a cellar which stores authentic bottles of wine, plus a garage and gardens. The gramophone plays miniature records and a grandfather clock chimes every hour.

There are 700 drawings and paintings, all commissioned by famous artists, floors and tiles fashioned from marble and hand- carved ceilings etched in gold leaf.

Stanley Gibbons donated a miniature stamp album of British and colonial stamps and the Queen’s Library has porcelain figurines — exact replicas of those found at Windsor Castle.

The lighting fittings were all very delicate (and irreplaceable). Simply dismantling them was a work of art and my father then had to set about inserting tiny wires into each chandelier, table lamp and wall light.

His workshop was our cellar, which had a miniature railway running around its circumference, a lifelong passion of his. I remember holding one chandelier from the Queen’s bedroom.

Before the doll’s house was re-opened for viewing, my father, mother, brother, sister and I were invited to a private viewing at the castle and, on a separate occasion, my father and his team met the Queen in person and received her thanks.

He died in 1980, but memories of his expertise live on. Unlike the Westbrook house, Queen Mary’s will never be in a sale room; it’s now displayed permanently at Windsor Castle.

MAGGIE NEW, Seaford, W. Sussex.