The Royal Family cut down to size: Queen Mary's five foot tall Dolls' House opens its tiny doors to the public

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 02:42 EDT, 25 October 2010

At five feet tall, this miniature house is priceless. From the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in the garage to the original works by Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling, it is a perfectly preserved piece of history.

Designed by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and built in 1924 for Queen Mary, wife of George V, the dolls house reveals a small slice of the royals' high life.

Its tiny contents, on a scale of one inch to one foot, range from the Lux flakes by the kitchen sink to electricty, running water and even a lift.

Royal residence: The 5ft tall dolls house designed for Queen Mary which has 750 works of art

Through the key hole: Inside the Queen Mary's doll house

The landscaped grounds, designed by Gertrude Jekyll, a top gardener of the time, has a functioning lawnmower.

In the garage stand six 'horseless carriages' including a Daimler limousine and the Rolls, while the building houses 750 works of art, spanning from Victorian and pre-Raphaelite.

On the kitchen table is a tin a Coleman's Mustard and Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. By the sink are tiny tins of Lifebuoy and Sunlight soap.

The house -- now on show at Windsor Castle - has such attention to detail that it has proved to be a valuable document of social history, according to author Lucinda Lambton in her new book,The Queen's Dolls' House.

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Dinner is served: The dining room (above) and the drawing room to greet guests (below)

She told the Sunday Express:'Within seconds of staring into its tiny chambers a spell is cast enabling you to feel you are strolling through a sensational set piece untouched by human hand since the day it was finished.'

The glimpse into a bygone age was inspired by Princess Marie Louise, Queen Vicoria's grand-daughter, who asked Lutyens, the architect of the Cenotaph, to build it for Queen Mary.

She was a famous and obsessive collector of 'tiny craft' and the gift would be a mark of nation's thanks for her public loyalty during the First World War.

'There could be no better gift for her than a dolls' house filled with diminutive treasures,' said Lucinda.

Owner: Queen Mary and the splendour of the staircase designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens

Twenty-five composers were asked to contribute musical scores, but Sir Edward Elgar refused claiming the King and Queen were 'incapable of appreciating anything artistic.'

Princess Marie sent blank volumes to writers and poets to fill in and got back a hand-written leather-bound story from Conan Doyle called, How Watson Learned The Trick.

Kipling submitted a 4x3cm book of handwritten poems for the walnut-panelled library, some unpublished with his own illustrations. Thomas Hardy sent seven poems while Robert Graves penned five.

Other contributors included Aldous Huxley, John Buchan and Somerset Maugham, But Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw declined the royal invitation.

Tiny disc: BBC librarian Jennie Pougher holds the smallest vinyl record in the dolls house collection and the King's bedroom (right)

Alfred Dunhill supplied miniature cigars and custom-made tobacco, while the jewellers Cartier built a longcase clock for the marble hallway.

And behind a gate in the strongroom lie tiny copies of the Crown Jewels, weighing 1.5lbs rather than the real thing of 1.5tons. In the wine cellar are 200 bottles of Chateau Lafitte 1875 and five dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot.

Lucinda explained that there are no dolls in the house because 'one plonked in the midst of this magic would have grotesquely dispelled the enchantment.'

When Queen Mary was shown the tiny lavatory by the plumber, she got her earring stuck in his beard as they both peered down the pan.

Lucinda said: 'Their two heads were jammed down the lavatory.'