You have now reached the very heart of the collection where our collecting philosophy
reaches its finest flowering. The first thing to strike you on approaching this
room is the period music emanating from it. Here the museum diversifies, showing
dolls, teddy bears an
d
toys from the Edwardian Era but also pictures, ornaments and furnishings.Highlights include a cylinder music box by Abrahams and a Victorian doll’s bed filled with Bisque dolls and two prams (one an Edwardian Lines Bros’), each filled with the appropriate occupants, and a slightly later wooden rocking horse by the same firm. Notice the authentic fireplace (narrowly saved from the “developers”), the Victorian print of the wedding of the future Prince of Wales and one of the first penny comics (Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday).
If this was not enough to see the room is also filled with unusual children’s books and games from the period and earlier, including 100-year-old “tin” soldiers, with original boxes, on parade in a yet to be identified heavy gauge tinplate castle, Bing railway and stationary steam engines, two magnificent “pond yachts,” and a home made wooden ship manned by early German sailors.
And, as always, the girls are not forgotten, with an impressive German cooking
oven, sewing machine and baby clothes.
This is the room that every visitor remembers…