There’s little evidence today in local toyshops but Wimbledon has longstanding links with dolls.

Lucy Peck, one of the country’s top manufacturers of wax dolls in Victorian days, lived there and her great-grandson still does. Today he is proud owner of Rebecca and Lucy, among the last remaining dolls she produced. Each has flowing christening robes and real Titian hair.

Lucy Peck was uniquely skilled in fashioning angelic dolls from wax moulds. From the 1890s until the 1920s she ran the Dolls Warehouse and then the Dolls’ Home shop in London’s West End.

One of her best known creations was the Princess Victoria Doll, based on a picture of the young Queen by the artist Mary Gow, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor.

The original doll is thought to be one now displayed at the National Trust’s Museum of Childhood in Derbyshire.

Lucy’s notebooks containing the recipes for her wax models and her sculpting tools are in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. As the popularity of wax dolls waned, replaced by bisque, she switched to making mannequins of real people - debutantes and titled ladies.

She lived in Mansel Road, Wimbledon, and spent her final years in Kingston, attending Kingston Art College where she continued to sculpt and model in clay.

But Wimbledon’s links with dolls continued. The Museum of London has one whose head was replaced at the Dolls Hospital and Pram Shop at 138-140 Merton Road. The owners Bailey and Bennett were described as “doll factors” and later as “baby carriage specialists” in the 1930s.

A family bought the business from Miss Bailey in the early 1950s and continued running the shops as before but added more toys, renaming the place the Dolls Hospital and Toy Shop. This sold prams, pushchairs and wooden nursery furniture.

It continued until the early 1960s when imported plastic dolls made in Hong Kong took over the market. With moving limbs, closing eyes and rooted hair, they were unbreakable and much cheaper than the breakable ones Lucy Peck had manufactured. Gradually the hospital work reduced and the business closed in 1969.

But that was not entirely the end of the story. The digital doll, Lara Croft, star of computer games whose Tomb Raider adventures involve finding hidden relics, solving mind-numbing puzzles, scaling cliffs, jumping crevasses, and beating fearsome beasts, was created by the team at Eidos Interactive, based at Hartfield Road in Wimbledon town centre.

She is said to have been born in Wimbledon and to have attended Wimbledon High School where she acquired her “authoritative, but sexy, cut-glass vowels”.

The Wimbledon Society is working with the Wimbledon Guardian to ensure that you, the readers, can share the fascinating discoveries that continue to emerge about our local heritage.

For more information, visit wimbledonsociety.org.uk and www.wimbledonmuseum.org.uk.

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