My original intention was always to recreate Hampton Court's vaulted cellars, filled with mini barrels that I collected as a child.
However, as plans for the whole castle developed I realised there was no space for such a room, and that the cellar had to be squeezed in below the stairs, only four inches wide, and six and a half inches long. So inspiration had to come from other, smaller sources.
My aim was always to have a space where I could imitate two rooms from Queen Mary's Dolls House: the cellar and the treasure house (above). The latter will be beneath another stairway.
Horace's brick shelves are based on those at The Georgian House in Edinburgh, (above) which I visited in 2015, but I have added arches at the top like those in Harewood House's cellars (below).
The bottles have been collected from dolls house shops over the years, and I look forward to leaving them in place for more years to get covered with dust! Here is the cellar so far, with ceiling still showing the bolsa structure of the stairs above, before decoration to look like stone or brick...
