FROM THE ARCHIVES:Titania's Palace, the famous doll's house now owned by Lego, returned to Dublin in 1930 after a world tour. This report also explained its origins in Mount Merrion. -
JOE JOYCE
HAVING TRAVELLED more than 40,000 miles and been visited by more than a million people, Titania’s Palace is to return to Dublin, after an absence of five years, for a brief exhibition towards the end of this month.
The people of Dublin have a particular interest in this palace, for it was in Dublin – at Mount Merrion – that it was conceived and made. The story of the conception of this fairy palace is as romantic as its construction is an exquisite work of art.
A quarter of a century ago, the young daughter of Sir Nevile Wilkinson, the Ulster King of Arms, was playing with her father in the grounds of his estate at Mount Merrion when she took him to an old sycamore tree, by which, she said, she had seen the good Fairy Queen, and asked where she went to. Her father replied that the Fairy Queen went to her palace beneath the ground.
This, however, did not satisfy the young lady, who wanted to know why she could not pay a visit to the palace. That started the train of thought that resulted in the ultimate conception of Titania’s Palace and its construction.
In 1906, Sir Nevile first began to draw up plans and make the beginnings in the construction of a lovely miniature fairy palace that was to take sixteen years to build, and even to-day is not entirely finished. Dedicated to the Fairy Queen, Titania, he had intended that it should adorn his London residence. “This,” Sir Nevile remarked, “did not coincide with the wishes of Queen Titania, who requested that her palace should travel the world over and make money for the poor and suffering crippled children.”
It was in 1922 that Queen Mary opened the palace, which was then exhibited at Olympia. In the last seven years it has made £34,000 for charity, after all expenses had been paid. The system on which the palace is exhibited is by renting it to the proprietors of a large shop.
In the case of the recent American visit, the rent charged was £200 per week. This sum goes towards paying expenses and salaries connected with the tour of the palace. All other money taken at the place at which it is displayed goes to a local charity. At the end of each year a balance sheet is struck, and all surplus money from the rents go either to the N.S.P.C.C. or the Waifs’ and Strays’ Society, two British institutions.
When Titania’s Palace comes to Dublin, within the next couple of weeks, it will be displayed in Messrs. Clery’s store, and the money received will go to the institution in Dublin for crippled children.
Referring to its American visit, Sir Nevile told an Irish Times representative yesterday that, in addition to its winning the coveted gold medal of the Philadelphia Exposition of 1926, it was known in the United States as “The Gem of the Sesqui ”.
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