Old Minnie Mouse Figurine

Beneath all this wear is a 1930s Minnie Mouse lead figurine, just 2 1/2 inches tall. She's clearly been through a lot, but is still smiling.

Antiquing Trip to England: Day 8, Rochester

The city of Rochester was built on the site of earlier Neolithic, Celtic, and Roman settlements along the river Medway. Needless to say, it is rich in history. England's second-oldest cathedral is here, founded in 604 AD, right alongside an atmospheric ruin, a Norman castle dating to 1127.

Rochester Cathedral

This cathedral was filled with particularly beautiful and interesting doors. Here is a sampling:

An intriguing passageway in the Cathedral.

Rochester Castle, like its cousin in Lewes, suddenly pops up between two buildings in the shopping district:

 Rochester Castle

Unlike Dover Castle, which is in good repair and was used militarily until recent times, Rochester Castle is a spooky ruin, open to the elements:

A tea break with more scones was followed by a visit to a dollhouse miniatures shop, where I got a tiny tea cake stand filled with itty bitty pastries, the perfect thing to bring home to my dollhouse residents.

Real tea cakes.

Don't they both look delicious?

Not real tea cakes.

A second-hand bookshop had a wonderful surprise inside. In one corner, shelves, cabinets, and cases were filled with small items dug up from local river banks, Victorian outhouse sites and rubbish dumps, and old cellars, the places where people disposed of things in the days before trash pickup services. (The centuries-old clay pipes mentioned in an earlier post came from this riverside.) The shop had shelves and shelves full of dug up old stoneware beer bottles, Victorian quack medicine containers, and even poison bottles! I got a handful of miniature china doll heads and a dollhouse chamber pot here, all locally excavated.

Everything seen here was dug up locally. 

Note the "Poison Bottle" sign on the top middle shelf, 

and "Victorian Quack Cures" below.

Dug up dollies, all miniatures.

 A dug up dollhouse doll head and chamber pot.

Rochester had a number of antique shops, and this one turned up two wonderful vintage teddy bears well-spotted by tour leaders Terry and Doris, who pointed me to the store. (Thank you Terry and Doris!)

 I got this 1950s Chad Valley ted with lovely curly mohair,

and a characteristically goofy-looking 

Pedigree, made in Ireland.

Coming up next: Day 9, Faversham (our last day in England.)

Antiquing Trip to England: Day Four, Lewes

Our fourth day in England was my very favorite of the whole trip (with Canterbury a close second, due to our visit to a teddy bear factory there). The town of Lewes (pronounced LOO-IS) is an antiquer's dream, hosting 13 antique shops, some with over 100 dealer booths inside.

Lewes is beautifully set in a valley just beneath the South Downs, chalk hills that run above the coast in the southeastern corner of Great Britain. It has been occupied since prehistoric times. Romans had a settlement here, and Saxons built a castle, which pops up on the unsuspecting shopper between a couple of stores on the high street.

Lewes Castle.

The main shopping area houses unique stores in lovely old buildings. This one, a second-hand book store called the Fifteenth Century Bookshop, was one of my favorites. (Click on it to magnify and see more details: it's magnificently ancient.)

Lewes is also home to Harveys, a beautiful brewery founded in 1790.

The highlight for me was Sue Pearson's famous teddy bear shop. Sue is an expert in antique and vintage bears, with several published books to her credit. Bears and Bygones was housed in a tiny storefront, but had a huge range of carefully selected antique, vintage, and modern bears. Here's a glimpse inside:

Doesn't this one look sort of like Winston Churchill?

It was difficult choosing at Sue Pearson's, but I finally settled on this couple, a 1930s English gentleman wearing a vintage sailor shirt, and a lovely 1920s American lady in her garden party dress and lace collar:

A charming couple of character bears.

From Sue's stock of modern artist bears, I chose this tiny "tea bag" ted, created by a Belgian artist whose work is quite difficult to find. Just 5 inches tall, he has a very unusual face that was most appealing.

After the teddy bear shop, it was time to begin exploring the antique stores. Our first stop was Church Hill Antiques Centre, housed, as its name suggests, in an old re-purposed church.

A sign we like to see!

A view inside the Church Hill Antiques Centre: 

Victorian taxidermy, old books, and china.

I found a really cool old toy in this antique shop: a lithographed tin bank in the form of a dollhouse, Queen Mary's Dollhouse, to be exact. Queen Mary's dollhouse was created specifically for her in the 1920s. It was designed by a famous British architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, and furnished with incredible miniatures donated by over 1,500 of the finest craftspeople in the country. The house is massive (the largest dollhouse in the world) and unbelievably detailed: water runs in the taps; fine champagne fills the tiny bottles in the wine cellar; and famous authors wrote miniature versions of works in their own hand for the library. 

This tin dollhouse bank was made by two firms who contributed items to the real dollhouse, and was sold to raise money for the Queen's favorite charities. Incredibly, the bank still had its original key attached, and there were eight old English coins (pennies, half-pennies, and farthings) inside, dating from 1885-1926.

Detail of the lithography, showing the dollhouse interior,

complete with a garage full of cars at the lowest level.

The text on the underside of the bank reads:

"Made in England

Model of 

The Queen's Dolls' House

Issued by 

Cauldon Potteries Ltd., Stoke-on-Trent

(Potters to Her Majesty the Queen)

in conjunction with

Chubb & Son's Lock & Safe Co., Ltd.,

128 Queen Victoria St., London, E.C. 1

Produced by Special Permission of H.M. The Queen,

whose charities benefit by the sale of each model.

Cauldon Potteries supplied miniature china for the Queen's Dolls' House, and Chubb & Son's Lock and Safe Co., a miniature Chubb safe to protect the Queen's Dolls Jewels."

After this great find, it was on to the next antique shop: the Lewes Antiques Centre. 

 Another sign we're happy to see...

...and still another!

The Lewes Antiques Centre had loads of old toys over its four floors, including this beautiful case holding a 1930s Noah's Ark and a bunch of bears:

I liberated this adorable vintage ted, a 1940s British bear with a cheery disposition:

 

By skipping lunch (we didn't even stop for our usual scone break) we made it to each and every one of the antique shops in town. We had our priorities straight, for sure!

 A very enticing antique shop window.

Our last stop was the Lewes Flea Market, housed in a beautiful Victorian building, with antiques over two floors. 

 An enticing view through the open doorway.

Yet another welcoming sign.

This wasn't really a flea market, as its name suggested. It was a fully realized antiques shop, and the bric-a-brac was invitingly dense:

This taxidermied bear wearing a fez pointed the way
to various collectibles.

I found a beautiful antique German bisque doll here, complete with old clothes and shoes, including a lovingly hand-knit sweater and matching stockings. Made by Goebel circa 1900, she measures a hefty 18 inches tall.

Doesn't she look like she's just been happily surprised by something?

My last find in Lewes was this vintage miniature wooden toy village, made in Germany. These little sets make great accessories for dolls and teddy bears, and are just lots of fun to play with. Villages like these have been made in Germany for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Finally, we limped (quite literally) back to the coach with our bags of finds. My new Wooly Bear sat next to me on the ride back to our hotel, guide books at the ready as we prepared for tomorrow.

Coming up next: Day 5, the village of Tenterden and a visit to Pashley Manor Gardens.

Antiquing Trip to England: Day Two, Henley-on-Thames

Our antiquing tour of England officially began with a visit to the beautiful town of Henley-on-Thames, situated, as its name suggests, along the famous river. Crossing the 18th century bridge into town, we saw a classic English narrowboat, one of the beautifully decorated houseboats that ply the waterways of Great Britain.

Our first stop in Henley was also our first teddy bear shop, Asquiths, housed in a marvelously preserved 15th century building. The display windows left no doubt as to the type of merchandise inside:

Teddy bears galore filled shelves, cupboards, and tables inside, and comical reminders to mind your head on the low, heavily beamed ceilings abounded:

See the plush yellow duck above the "Duck" warning?

Asquiths stocked mainly contemporary 

and artisan teddy bears, and I chose 

a small one crafted by a British couple, 

complete with hand-knit accessories 

and a wonderfully eccentric face:

The owners of Asquiths served us tea and pastries in their private apartment upstairs, which was delightful. And, we got to see their invitation to an upcoming garden party hosted by the Queen! I guess you could say we had tea with someone who is going to have tea with the Queen. That must count for something...

After Asquiths, it was on to my very first antique shop, the appropriately named Tudor House, in a building that was actually from the Tudor period. A sign on the front stated the house was built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, between 1560 and 1601! It was so marvelously old and looked so deliciously inviting, I would have willingly paid just to go inside...

Like Asquiths and all the other buildings we saw from this period, the ceilings were very low, made even lower in places by the heavy, blackened beams. This shop was so crowded with junque inside, it was almost impossible to hold the camera far enough in front of myself to take photos! Baskets, copper pots, and stoneware hung from the ceiling, and huge display cases filled the already tiny and cramped rooms. We had to weave our way through, occasionally backing up and onto the sidewalk so that people already inside the shop could make their way out. The second floor was a bit more open, and had very interesting architectural features:

Deep in one of the glass cases, I found these 3 tiny German bisque dolls, circa 1920: two dollhouse babies, just 2 and 3/4 inches tall, and a slightly larger standing one. Cute, cute, cute. 

After this, we visited several stores of a type plentiful in Britain, but not so familiar here in the States: Charity Shops. The UK has loads of charities devoted to various causes, and many of them raise funds by selling donated items in these storefronts. The merchandise is cleaned and professionally arranged, and the stores are often so nice, you almost forget they're second-hand shops. Here are a few we spotted over the tour:

Charity Shops are great places for treasure hunting at bargain prices, and I wasn't disappointed. In my very first one here in Henley, I all but stumbled over a 1930s English dollhouse sitting on the floor right inside the door. It had been lovingly played with over two generations: some of the rooms had been repapered in the early 1960s, and the furnishings were a mix of 1930s German and 1950s-60s British. Most likely, a mother passed it down to her daughter, and they played with it together, giving the dollhouse a wonderful history.

Carrying the dollhouse to the bus.

An English dollhouse had been at the very top of my trip wish list, and after some estimated on-the-spot weighing and measuring, it was purchased and carried down the street back to our waiting coach. And thankfully, it did indeed fit in my largest suitcase, and didn't make it overweight. It was an antiquing miracle.

The really neat thing about this dollhouse was, we saw many very similar real houses on our travels throughout England. Finding it was like getting to take a little piece of England home with me. 

The oldest piece of furniture in the house was this 1930s German-made cupboard, found in the bedroom, which still had its original floral carpet paper:

I love the classic British hunting print hanging on the bedroom wall:

The house and furniture is sized just right for Flagg Family dollhouse dolls, who moved in once I got it home. Here, dad and junior hang out in the TV room.

Coming up next: Day 3, the white cliffs and castle of Dover, and old toy finds at a boot sale (flea market)...