Doll's Houses: Miniature Marvels for the Interiors

This is a magnificent 18th-century wedding cake of a house, five storeys piled high with strings of grand rooms, attics, panelling, ornate plasterwork and an architectural masterpiece of a staircase. It is a small palace fit for a duke and duchess, all limestone dressings and Doric columns. Servants’ quarters, kitchens, pantries and sculleries are buried in the basement. It needs total decoration.

All doll’s house makers say that nine out of 10 of their sales go to adults. Thousands of them attend dedicated doll’s house festivals around Europe. “It gives them back a bit of their lost youth. Most of them are in their mid-sixties and they always say they wanted a doll’s house when they were young,” Mark (The doll's house maker) says. “A doll’s house is an asset, because it goes up in value more than money in a bank account. And it is all about having the fantasy house that you can’t afford to buy.”

Much of the value is in the interior décor. “You can buy furniture room sets for £15 to £20 each, or you can go to proper craftsmen who will make furniture with inlaid marquetry at £400 to £500 a room. It isn’t the houses so much as the things which go in them which are valuable. You can get chandeliers, flock wallpapers, table settings, anything,” Mark adds. Fully decorated, Ashworth Grange could be worth £40,000 to £50,000.