It’s a small world, Mr Dickens (From The Northern Echo)

It’s a small world, Mr Dickens

5:32pm Thursday 16th February 2012 in Entertainment

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago this week. Helen Russell talks to a Teesdale woman who has made the great novelist a part of her miniature world for almost two decades.

WHEN a newly-retired Teesdale woman decided that she wanted a doll’s house, she had no idea of the historical journey she was about to embark upon.

But a labour of love that started back in 1994, evolved into a quest to lovingly recreate the house where legendary author Charles Dickens once lived in London, a quest that took her all over the country.

After retiring from her 35-year career teaching at Baliol School and St Mary’s CofE School, in Barnard Castle, Margaret Watson decided she wanted a doll’s house from the Victorian era, which she could “clutter up”

with furniture and decor from the period.

The story, which would span three decades, began to unfold after she approached furniture maker, Chris Helliwell, in the early Nineties, when he had a stall at the Hayloft, in Barnard Castle, and asked if he could build such an item for her.

Soon after, Chris visited Curlew’s second-hand bookshop in the town and chanced upon a book which contained plans to build scale model of Dickens’ former residence at 48 Doughty Street, London, where the novelist lived from 1837 to 1839.

Given Dickens’ connections with Teesdale and the chance discovery of the Doughty Street plans, Margaret promptly decided it was fate that she should commission the construction of this particular model.

Although the plans were not complete – they didn’t contain details for the two attic rooms or the kitchens underneath the house – Chris used old photographs of the town house to recreate the rooms. Apart from the piano and polescreen, he painstakingly built all the furniture in the house.

“Margaret would come up to the Hayloft and say to me ‘I have been thinking…’ and it kept on evolving. I remember the house staying in my living room for about a year,” says the selfemployed furniture maker, from Fawcett, near Richmond.

“It took a bit of getting there, but it made a nice change from my job in standard furnituremaking to work on a 1:12 scale. It was nice not lumping big bits of wood around.

“It wasn’t quite to scale and I could’ve done with there being more space in the bedrooms, but I used the same equipment as I do for the big furniture, I just had to be more careful with it.”

Margaret was the proud owner of the house for a year before starting to furnish it in 1995.

Chris made all of the furniture apart from the piano and it took 108 hours to painstakingly wallpaper all the rooms. His interior designer wife Lone made the curtains for the house, while members of the Woodhorn Matters group, based in Ashington, Northumberland, used their traditional skills to create scaled-down proggy mats.

Now Margaret describes the model as “a friendship house” because she made so many friends all over the country as she travelled about doing her research.

“It has been a real labour of love. I feel humble that it has caused such a lot of interest and I have got so much pleasure from doing it. I have met some amazing people. Everything is commissioned and the craftspeople have been superb,” she says.

“I have learnt such a lot of social history. I tried to make the drawing room and the dining room posh areas, whereas the other rooms are lived in. In Dickens’ time, visitors to the house had to be shown up to the drawing room.”

Dickens’ connections with the area came about during the novelist’s research for Nicholas Nickleby. He was inspired to visit the area after reading press coverage of a conjunctivitis epidemic at the boys’ academy in Bowes, one of the notorious boarding establishments known as the Yorkshire Schools.

During his trip, accompanied by his illustrator Hablot Browne, Dickens stayed at the Morritt Arms Hotel, in Greta Bridge, and the old Kings Head, in Barnard Castle.

It is thought he pretended to be a widower of someone who wanted to send their child to the school in Bowes, but staff became suspicious and thought he was a snooping journalist. He based the notorious Dotheboy’s Hall school, in Nicholas Nickleby, on the establishment in Bowes and it is believed his novel led ultimately to the closure of the school.

Margaret’s model house has become the focal point of a year-long exhibition in the Bowes Museum, at Barnard Castle, celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth.

He was born on February 7, 1812.

Vivien Vallack, head of exhibitions at the museum, says there has been a tremendous reaction to the house from visitors of all ages.

“I think people can instantly see the love that has gone into creating such a marvellous place,” she says. “We are delighted to have it here all year to celebrate the anniversary year.”

• The museum is open daily from 10am to 5pm. The Charles Dickens’ 200th Anniversary: Model House exhibition is on until December.