Bomb Site House 1940

Veronica Tonge

I am an artist and vintage doll’s house collector and restorer, and have finished (at last) packing up over 39 doll’s houses and related artworks, in preparation for a house move, which has now sadly ground to a halt due to COVID -19. Hopefully we can get on with it at some stage.



The Bomb Site House (made 1940)

 This dilapidated little beauty was too heavy to wrap and needs lots of sympathetic restoration, so enforced isolation is the perfect chance to get on with it. Made in 1940 by a policeman and fireman, using wood (mainly oak) debris from blitz bomb sites around the Finsbury area of London, it was made to cheer up the two small daughters of a local doctor during Britain’s darkest hour. Stylistically it is 1930s ‘Moderne’ (a little like Mayfair Court in Herne Bay, built for Cissie, fiancee of the playboy Sultan of Johor) and has been fitted with bomb proof mesh windows. Originally the roof was not green, but blue and the exterior, although white seems correct, was in fact a rich yellow ochre, with blue edging. The family who owned it for its entire life, until I acquired it in 2013, did a little ‘makeover’ in the late 1960s, which I would like to reverse back to the 1940s.




Bomb Site House 1940 Interior

This is the inside - lots to do. Including re attachment of roof access flap (for electrics and storage), several missing doors to replace in old plywood, flooring (imitation 1930s parquet style) in the dining room and some sort of period carpet or linoleum elsewhere, then walls to be ‘distempered ’in suitable period colours. I have all the surviving furniture, mainly homemade or ‘make do and mend’ adaptations.  









As work progresses, myself AND my husband are both working on this house as a confinement stress-buster. I will keep you updated on progress.