WITH bespoke furniture, electrics and even occupants, work is under way on a miniature model of a famed aristocratic county home.

Museum volunteers are putting together a dolls’ house version of now-demolished Lockinge House, former home of Lord and Lady Wantage.

Supporters of Vale and Downland Museum have scoured the country for specialists to make tiny tables, chairs and people for the miniature mansion.

The model will use an existing dolls’ house, bequeathed two years ago by museum volunteer Joan Eels, of Charlton.

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The house will be “set” on a very specific date, July 14, 1877, a historic day in the history of the town.

This was the day when the Prince and Princess of Wales unveiled the town’s statue of King Alfred the Great and afterwards went to tea at Lockinge House.

Museum community co-ordinator Dorothy Burrows said: “Lockinge estate and Lord and Lady Wantage are such an important part of the Wantage story.

“When we have visitors to the galleries, especially schools or Cubs and Scouts, we want to be able to bring them to life.

“With a dolls’ house we can create a snap shot of life in this grand house.”

Yet unlike the dozens of rooms at the mansion, this miniature recreation is more modestly sized, with eight rooms.

The team are recreating a selection of rooms using old photographs and records as the home was demolished in 1947 as owners looked for savings.

Volunteer Brian Tonks, 66, of Stanford in the Vale, spent five hours making one 45cm by 20cm wooden panel.

Mr Tonks, who used to run a dolls’ house shop in the Post Office Vaults, Wantage, said: “I just enjoy working in miniature and working in wood.”

The original three-storey Georgian country house was built in 1750.

It was inherited by Harriet Loyd and her husband Lieutenant– Colonel Robert James Lindsay, later Lord and Lady Wantage, on their marriage in 1858.

Lord Wantage achieved fame with the Scots Guards in the Crimean War in the 1850s and was one of the first people ever to receive the Victoria Cross.

He later became MP for Berkshire, was head of the Wantage Tramway Company and bought the statue of King Alfred for Wantage for 2,000 guineas. He died at Lockinge House in 1901 and his wife’s cousin, Christopher Lewis Loyd, who inherited the 7,500-acre estate, led the demolition.

Project leader Lesley Wilkins said museum staff had originally hoped to turn it into another of Wantage’s famous homes, Ormond House.

But she said: “We went to the museum and looked at the Lord Wantage display.

“They have this big black and white photograph of Lockinge House with all the staff in front of it, and I just said ‘that’s it’.”

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