Ely House
| Width | 21" | Depth (max) | 18" (21") | Height | 47" |
| Floors | 4 | Rooms | 6 | Staircases | 3 | External doors | 1 |
| Internal doors | 7 | Opening panels | 2 | Windows | 7 | Chimney stacks | 2 |
| Plaster fireplaces | 5 | Washing coppers | 1 | Bread ovens | 1 | Chimney pots | 7 |
Ely House is compact but is richly fitted out and has many of the features of the larger dolls houses in the Anglia Dolls Houses range. Built from birch plywood to 1/12th scale, this house is for the adult
Ely House has 4 floors: the reception rooms are on the two central floors, while the kitchen is in the basement and bedrooms on the top floor, accessed by cupboard stairs. Even a house of this size may have had a servant although they would have probably slept in the basement, possibly on a fold-down bed.
The standard house is decorated throughout with colours appropriate to the Georgian period. On bespoke orders you can choose your colours from the Farrow & Ball colour card. Skirting is fitted throughout and coving to the rooms of the first and second floors. The reception rooms have dado rails. The 6-panel internal wooden doors are all painted 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.
Ely House Photographs
Exterior
Ely 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 first floor landing. Image was important in Georgian England: 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. Underneath the stucco may have been cheap brick or rubble stone. Above the stucco (depending on the option you choose), the walls are either plain painted; exposed brick; or, more grand, ashlar masonry.
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.
Ely House showing brick effect exterior view.
Stucco and the grating over the light well.
Plain painted exterior.
Front door.
Angled view showing side-opening panel.
Looking through the grating towards the basement
window.
Detail of the window set in stucco.
Roof with individually laid terracotta effect tiles and terracotta chimney pots.
Interior
Unlike some of my other houses that would be occupied by the families of the gentry, Ely House is designed for a man of means like a successful merchant(definitely not a member of the gentry!) and the interior, whilst comfortable, is not very grand. It has modest rooms on 3 floors above a basement kitchen. The reception rooms are on the two central floors, while the bedrooms are on the top floor, accessed by winding cupboard stairs. If there had been a servant, they would probably have slept in the basement, possibly on a fold down bed.
Basement
Ely House has a large basement room with grouted flagstones on the floor. The basement is fitted out as a combined kitchen/scullery and has a washing copper, bread oven and inglenook arch into which you could place a range. The basement has some period details: a gutter runs through the centre of the flagstone floor and a pillar supports the floor above. The basement window receives its light from a light well set into the pavement outside and covered by a grating. Cupboard stairs connect the basement to the hallway above.
Basement kitchen with decorative brick-edged arch for range, washing
copper, opening bread oven with dummy fire box, dummy back door.
Oven door open.
Washing copper.
Arched storage area, drain gulley, cupboard stairs.
Detail of pillar and drain gulley.
Cupboard stairs.
Ground Floor
The ground floor has a reception room with two arched alcoves each containing dummy cupboards and fitted shelving in arched alcoves either side of the fireplace.
First Floor
The first floor has a large landing and two rooms. The larger room might be used as a drawing room or parlour. The smaller room, which might make a breakfast room, has a corner fireplace which was quite a common method of fitting in a fire where there would otherwise be insufficient space.
Drawing Room or Parlour.
View from the Drawing Room to the landing.
Looking through side-opening panel onto the landing and cupboard stairs.
Looking into the Drawing Room from the landing.
Breakfast Room.
Second Floor
The second floor rooms would probably be used as bedrooms and are high enough in the building to be out of the worst of the noise and smells of the street below.
Stairs
Stairs are a speciality of Anglia Holls Houses. Although only a simple provincial townhouse, as you would expect the main stairs in Ely House have stringers and separate stain-varnished treads. Even the cupboard stairs to the basement and to the second floor are complete. Those to the second floor have winding steps. The dolls (not included) by Patricia Hirons give a sense of scale.
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.