Cambridge House
| Width | 30" | Depth (max) | 18" (21") | Height(max) | 44 (48)" |
| Floors | 4 | Rooms | 9 | Staircases | 3 | External doors | 1 |
| Internal doors | 8 | Opening panels | 2 | Windows | 7 | Chimney stacks | 2 |
| Plaster fireplaces | 5 | Washing coppers | 1 | Bread ovens | 1 | Chimney pots | 7 |
Cambridge House2 is a comfortable 4 storey Georgian townhouse with generously sized room as found in prosperous market towns across the country.
Probably part of a terrace of buildings, Cambridge House has a broad frontage (30 feet to scale) and the real thing would be much deeper than a dolls house permits. It has quite grand rooms on 3 floors above a basement kitchen. Cambridge House would be occupied by perhaps a successful merchant or a professional man and his family who would entertain and keep at least one or two servants.
The standard house is decorated throughout with colours appropriate to the Georgian period. On bespoke orders the rooms you can choose your colours from the Farrow & Ball colour card. The main reception room is panelled to dado rail height and all 3 reception rooms have ceiling mouldings and ceiling roses. A grand ceiling cornice is fitted to both the first floor reception rooms. Additional panelling and ceiling mouldings can be added as options. Skirting is fitted throughout and coving to the rooms of the first and second floors. The 6-panel internal wooden doors are all painted or stain varnished with turned brass door knobs. The house has stain varnished scribed floorboards with lifting boards that conceal the wiring for lights. It is already wired for fires that could be added into the kitchen alcove and inside the fireplaces which are each fitted with a hearth stone.
Cambridge House Photographs
Exterior
Cambridge House would probably be part of a terrace of buildings. To overcome the restrictions imposed by a dolls house and to make it interesting, a window is provided in a side opening panel to light the main stair case and the first floor landing.
The front panel at ground floor level is covered in horizontally banded stucco in an attempt to make the building look grander than it really is. Above the stucco (depending on the option you choose), the walls are either plain painted; exposed brick; or, more grand, ashlar masonry. The upper façade is finished with a substantial coving with dentil detail and a parapet consisting of solid and turned balustrade sections.
Outside there is a pavement finished with grouted flagstones that swings open with the front panel. Set into the flagstones is a grating over a light well for the basement window.
Cambridge House exterior corner view
showing attached street & basement
and the side-opening panel.
Front door with elaborate canopy, stucco and grating covering the light well.
Side-opening panel revealing stairs
and first-floor landing.
Teracotta chimney pots.
Interior
The reception rooms are on the two central floors connected by an elegant entrance hall and main staircase while the servants' quarters and the bedrooms, in the basement and top floor, are accessed by separate cupboard stairs. The back stairs to the basement open into the entrance hall making it easy for a servant to welcome visitors arriving at the front door.
Basement
Cambridge House has two large basement rooms each with grouted flagstones on the floor. The larger basement room is fitted out as a kitchen with bread oven and inglenook arch into which you could place a range. The other smaller basement room is a scullery with a washing copper. The basement kitchen window receives its light from a light well set into the pavement outside and covered by a grating. Servants’ stairs connect the basement to the hallway above.
Basement kitchen with decorative brick-edged arch for cooking range,
opening bread oven with dummy fire-box beneath.
Kitchen shelves and door to scullery.
Scullery with dummy back door.
Washing copper in the scullery
viewed through the kitchen door.
Scullery looking towards the back stairs.
Washing copper.
Ground Floor
On the ground floor is a grand entrance hall containing the main staircase. The entrance hall has a door that lead to the servant's back stairs and another to the dining room, which is conveniently close to the basement kitchen
Dining Room with plaster fireplace.
Dining Room looking towards the door.
Entrance hall and stairs. The door at the back leads to the
basement stairs.
First Floor
The first floor rooms have the highest ceilings in the house and would have been used for entertaining. The main reception room is spacious and intriguing views of it are available across the landing from the opening side panel.
Drawing Room with panelling to dado height.
Drawing Room door with simple overdoor.
Morning Room with corner fireplace.
View from the Morning Room across
the landing towards the rear
cupboard stairs.
Second Floor
The rooms on this floor would have been used as bedrooms. The narrow room leading to the largest bedroom may have been used as a dressing room.
Bedroom with door open showing
view towards the back stairs.
View across the rear landing
from the main bedroom.
Looking in through the window above the
side-opening panel.
Dressing Room.
Fireplace in the main bedroom.
Stairs
Stairs are a speciality of Anglia Dolls Houses. The main stairs in a Cambridge House turn at an intermediate landing and are visible through a side window set in the opening side panel. The cupboard stairs to the basement and the second floor are complete and have winding steps where approriate.
Gallery
With thanks to my customers for allowing me to use their photographs.
Entrance Hall. Mrs A. Denmark.
Breakfast Room. Mrs A. Denmark.
Drawing Room. Mrs A. Denmark.
Christmas in the Dining Room. Mrs A. Denmark.
Basement kitchen. Mrs A. Denmark.
Scullery. Mrs A. Denmark.
Lighting
From Autumn 2011 all fully decorated Anglia Dolls Houses include a package of lights as standard with a quality Smallworld digital transformer and Easy Wire fused distribution strip. If you prefer to specify your own choice of lights I can build these in for you. Wiring is concealed behind a false back panel, under lift up floorboards and also down the chimney breasts. The way that the wiring is done makes it easy for you to add further lights at a future date. See the Electric Lighting Datasheet for more details of the standard package of lights included with this house if purchased fully finished.
If you would like more information about this dolls house please call or email me.