Family Life

When Queen Mary's Dolls' House went on show in the Empire Exhibition, it made it possible for the public to better imagine how family life was led within a Royal Household. The top floor of the house has two bedrooms, four lobbies and six rooms, all of which are filled with memorabilia of childhood and family life. Also on the top floor is the housekeeper's bed-sitting room and the linen room.

Family life is nowhere more visible than in the Day Nursery, which is brimming with toys. The walls are covered in murals of fairy tales by Edmund Dulac, one of the most prominent illustrators of the 1880s to the 1920s. Dulac also painted the chinoiserie-style silk walls of the Queen's Sitting Room, where items such as an unfinished embroidery and cabinets of a jade figure collection give sense of the Queen's leisure pursuits.

In households with a nursery, a nanny played a crucial role. It was usual for the baby to sleep with the nanny, and the Night Nursery in the dolls' house has a grand bed for the nanny, as well as a cradle for baby.

Explore some of the miniature objects below: