I was inspired to start these pages on Doll’s Houses by a visit to Hoghton Tower, reputedly the third most haunted house in England. But we had visited West Horsley Place because of the Ghosts TV series. 

I hadn’t watched any of the programmes when we decided to visit, though Sarah had, but I made sure I got through them all in order to understand what we were being told. Most of the others on the tour were women and girls. Some of the girl had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the series.

West Horsley Place is the sort of house that I can imagine would have have one or more Doll’s Houses over time. But the one now on display was made for the Ghosts series. I gather that after filming was complete the model was put on eBay where one of the volunteers spotted it. Money was raised and the house bought for the Trust that runs West Horsley Place.

The pictures of the house are downloaded from the internet.

The model with some of the main characters in Ghosts.

The other pictures were taken by me on our visit for a tour. The venue was being used for filming something else (they wouldn’t tell us what). This meant that the front is a bit different to what appears in Ghosts, though the “Button House” sign was up. Also, there were some rather impressive supports on one of the side wings. Despite the dilapidation of parts of the property these were fake for filming.

Visited 27 September 2024