Dollhouses have been a part of Barbara Blackwood's life “practically from birth”, when her artist mother built the first one for her.

“From there, it just went and on and on throughout my childhood,” she says. “I had a marvellous family whose women made beautiful things, and in time I learned to make beautiful things too. I used to paint and wallpaper my dollhouses even though it took me a long time because I wasn't very good at it.”

In fact, dollhouses became Mrs. Blackwood's passion, but when she relocated to Bermuda in the early 1970s to marry her husband, Neil Blackwood, it was, for the first time, with no dollhouse in tow.

However, it didn't take long for him to realise that it was going to be a case of “love me, love my dollhouse”.

“The first thing she did after we married was to carefully eat away at me until I agreed that she should build a new dollhouse,” Mr. Blackwood smiles.

Thus it was that well-known local fine furniture maker Jeremy Johnson was commissioned to design and make an interpretation of a Yorkshire house once owned by her forebears, the original of which still stands today.

As an assignment, it was a “first” for the skilled craftsman, and took him two years to complete. Named ‘Arnecliffe House', the semi-baronial dollhouse had 18 rooms, together with a greenhouse and garden, and all of the decorative interior and exterior wood was of Bermuda cedar. Once completed, Mrs. Blackwood furnished it from top to bottom, using many of the miniature pieces she had retained from her previous dollhouses. Other items were procured from the United States and Britain through careful research.

“We went to every single dollhouse we could find in England, including Queen Mary's at Windsor,” Mr. Blackwood says. In Herefordshire we found a place where we could also buy costume dolls (another hobby), and we still have some of those,” Mr. Blackwood says.

So beautiful was Mrs. Blackwood's Bermuda-made dollhouse that she was often told, “You should have this on display in a public place.” So she opened a little museum in a former Bermuda residence, ‘Hurstholme', on Trott Road in Hamilton where, in addition to the dollhouse, Mrs. Blackwood displayed her collection of antique, costume and character dolls (another hobby); clothing worn in the 1800s; and lace from France, Ireland and England; as well as a fine collection of lead toy soldiers owned by Mr. John Rosewarne; military uniforms, and scale models of locomotives.

‘The Little Long Ago', as the museum The Little Long Ago', as the museum was called, was a “first” for Bermuda, and proved very popular with visitors and locals alike.

“We had a ball,” Mrs. Blackwood remembers.

When the museum closed, Mrs. Blackwood subsequently took ‘Arnecliffe House' with her to the couple's summer home in Vinalhaven, Maine, where it was housed in an historical museum for some years. Although much-admired, since it was not an American dollhouse, the museum was unenthusiastic about keeping it permanently. Once again, Mrs. Blackwood brought the beloved structure back to Bermuda, where she set it up in the spare bedroom of the couple's rented accommodation.

With her advancing years, however, she reluctantly conceded that the big and much-travelled dollhouse was becoming too burdensome to retain. Its future, however, would be carefully decided, for the next owner would have to be someone who loved and understood dollhouses just as much as she did.

Through a friend's recommendation, Mrs. Blackwood had tea with Mrs. Ronnie Chameau, who has built and painstakingly furnished several large-scale dollhouses in Bermuda.

“We went home and thought about it, and then told Ronnie we would give ‘Arnecliffe House' to her on condition that she gave it a good home,” Mr. Blackwood says.

Mrs. Chameau was incredulous but delighted at the couple's generosity, and the dollhouse was duly set it up in her own home. As an artist, however, there were modifications that she wished to make.

“I installed electricity, and changed the interior,” Mrs. Chameau says. “I removed all of the old wallpaper and redid it. Then, because I travel to France so much and love Claude Monet's house at Giverny, I redid two rooms as exact replicas of his kitchen and dining room, and am now in the process of recreating his living room.”

Like the previous owner, however, Mrs. Chameau concluded over time that the refurbished dollhouse was “too beautiful” not to be enjoyed by the public, so she began looking for an appropriate site. Four years later, when she learned that the little stone house built by master craftsman Larry Mills in the Botanical Gardens following the Smithsonian Exhibition in Washington, DC, was to be used as a children's area, she felt her search had ended. So, with Parks Department curator Lisa Outerbridge's blessing, ‘Arnecliffe House' was relocated there in February. On reflection, however, Mrs. Outerbridge felt that, since there was no electricity to prosperly illuminate it, the much-travelled dollhouse would be seen to better advantage by more people in the Visitors' Centre, where it now occupies centre stage.