A miniature world of escapism - hidden inside historic Chesterfield shop

In a few short strides you’ve left the High Street hubbub, its shoppers and noise, that unavoidable zig-zag of oncoming folk, and then, in a single chime of the Crooked Spire church bell, you are somewhere else altogether. A quietness that is immediate, in both sound and bodies, the tall buildings either side changing the light. A brick-built maze where pigeons huddle and coo, the slaughterhouse shops of yesteryear a ghost of flat-cap bygones. The crooked downhill of paving slabs a travel into a past that is gone, but not. In short, it can feel a little spooky.

And, entering the TwelfthCraft doll’s house shop, feels a little spooky too. Imagine a Victorian gothic ghost story, the scene a room full of miniature houses with little people stood staring out at you as they pause from their daily business. The shop door rattles as you go to shut it, a little bell rings.

“Hello,” says a voice from somewhere behind you. You turn, and stood behind a waist-high art-deco display cabinet, ghostly-lit and housing tiny pieces of furniture, is Caroline. “It’s cold,” she says, as a warm smile softens the spooky.

“I taught for many thousands of years… actually thirty-five,” she says, telling the motivation behind the shop. “The idea of this shop is to provide experience for people with difficulties finding work. A nice safe environment, where we can teach maths and English. I need to establish myself first of all, and then, the idea is for next year.”

Caroline Gleadall, 64, has a distinct determination to succeed. “I started four years ago and we had a tiny little shop on the outside of the Market Hall. It was too small for what I wanted. And then, we moved to Cavendish Street… And then the pandemic hit, and then the pandemic hit again. So… I thought, I wasn’t going to do this anymore.”

What changed your mind? “I don’t want to live in some dystopian world where no small businesses exist and we’re all online. And although I like having an online presence, people want to come in and look. So, this came up and I thought, I’m going to take it. This was eighteen months ago. It takes a while to establish yourself, and for people to find you.”

We talk of The Shambles, how it feels like some half-hidden other-world within Chesterfield. “It’s lovely,” Caroline says, “It’s really important historically.” She talks of an old photograph of her part of the alley: “There’s a little girl stood on the back-step, and the step is new. Now it’s worn down. That was a hundred and twenty years ago.”

The shop door opens, and in walks a lady and a man. The man is looking for old toy cars, a collector. Caroline goes upstairs to her storeroom, appears minutes later with a shoebox full of them. The miniature figures look on as the couple leave happy, and the question is asked about customers.

“A lot of my customers are men. A lot of men build doll’s houses. We need to get away from this whole girls and boys gender issue. Ultimately, I would like to get rid of the term ‘doll’s house’ because actually, that implies that they are for little girls, and that’s something that happened post-industrial revolution when they started mass-producing things. Prior to that, it was something people had as a collector’s item in their house, you know… a sort of conversation piece.”

The conversation turns to why - what is it about creating a miniature house? Caroline smiles.

“It’s the ‘god’ idea. For those that play games, they’ll get it. It’s the whole thing… you control. You don’t have to get the plumber in. You don’t have to joiner in. You don’t have to get the electrician in. The house belongs to you.”

Is this an escapism? “I like it to be my house. I like to be in the house. If you put a mirror on the back wall, as soon as you open the door, the person who’s house it is can see themselves in the house.”

For a moment here, the gothic ghost story tilts to a Hammer horror. Or maybe the person writing this has watched far too many scary movies? Caroline smiles.

“For children it’s great, because they will play with the house and the figures, and they might not tell you what they’ve done today, but if you listen, you’ll find out. They’ll re-enact the things that have happened. So, if the teacher wasn’t in a good mood, you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll hear it.”

This feels an interesting turn. Does this suggest a kind of therapy? Caroline nods.

“The other thing about doll’s houses is that they can be used by people who have developed dementia, as a memory jogger. So you could take a house and put things in it from the time that the person remembers most.”

Caroline talks of someone she knew. “The 1960s, that was the era she said she went back to, so I used to take things to her that jogged her memory… Bright wallpaper, formica tables, Beatles memorabilia… It provided a conversation piece, which was fun for her.”

Caroline adds that she also stocks little garden sheds. “The other day someone came in who’s dad has dementia. She bought one, and she says it’s just changed their time together, because they can talk about the flowers and the seedlings.”

We walk round the shop, looking at the displays. Caroline points to a little stage-set: “I love the musical instruments. They’re so perfect.” Next is a big tiny table filled with food and crockery: “I did this one for the Queen’s Jubilee, but then it dissolved into a Mad Hatter’s tea party!” Caroline laughs, a look of excitement in her eyes.

Is it fun setting up the displays? “Oh its great! I love it! It wakes me up in the middle of the night… how I can do it. I really want to do the Wizard of Oz. I’m trying to work out how to suspend a house in the air so it’s not dangerous to anybody. Alice in Wonderland is another I’d like to do. I love fiction. The ones with a story behind them. Why there are certain things in the story, and then making sense of it.”

And what’s the story behind the name ‘TwelfthCraft’? “The shop is called TwelfthCraft because the houses are mostly twelfth-scale. So, if you work in feet and inches, it’s one inch to a foot. I am five foot… So I’d be five inches in a doll’s house.”

And who else would you have in the house? Caroline thinks for a moment. “It would be the poet Coleridge… I’d really like to find out why he wrote The Ancient Mariner. Mary Shelley… Ada Lovelace, who was related to Byron… the fathers and mothers to the steampunk era.”

“The other person would be Richard Francis Burton. He was one of the great Renaissance people of the Victorian age. Master swordsman… translated The Perfume Garden… Spoke hundreds of languages… a fascinating man.”

“Building your own world. And it doesn’t have to be a house.” Caroline shows an old clock-case she’s turned into a little sweet-shop. A Victorian medicine cabinet that’s now a tiny dwelling.

“If you can’t afford a doll’s house, you buy an Ikea book shelf. And you floor it, and put some fairy lights in it, and you can make a house really cheap.”

And how does this determined and resourceful Caroline see her place in Chesterfield?

“I moved to Chesterfield five years ago. And I love it. It feels like home. I love the feeling of working together with the indie shops. We’re all friends. And we all support each other. And that’s what it should all be about.”

“There’s everything you could possibly need where the indie shops are concerned. People just need to use them. We need to appreciate what Chesterfield has. And Chesterfield has got a lot. The empty shops just need to be utilised in some way.”

It’s hard not to imagine Caroline Gleadall as the miniature town planner, each little street filled with kooky and delightful, every tiny shop stocked with weird and wonderful.

“I would like to see this as a thriving business that I can pass on to somebody else. Whether that will happen or not… but that is my aim.”