Editor’s note: Up until 1914 the Wilkinson family lived at Mount Merrion house, outside Dublin. It was here presumably that Sir Nevile’s daughter (Guendolen or Phyllis, he had two?) saw her fairy.

The story of how Sir Neville Wilkinson, the Ulster King-at-Arms, came to build Titania’s Palace, the Queen’s doll-house, which is being exhibited in London just now in aid of the Middlesex Hospital, is delightful. One day, twenty odd years ago, this gifted painter was at his easel, when his three.year-old daughter declared she saw a fairy disappearing between the exposed roots of a cycamore tree near the house. She was sure there was a hidden fairy palace down there, so Sir Nevile began to build Titania’s Palace to entice the fairies above the ground. Sir Nevile, as an officer of the Coldstream Guards, is a crack shot at a thousand yards. He is in London just now to make a talkie film with Titania’s Palace as a subject. Anon, ‘Titania’s Palace’Dundee Courier (29 June 1929), 12