A HAMPSHIRE village is staging a week of half-term activities to celebrate its links to the "real" Alice in Wonderland.
Author Lewis Carroll based his famous character on Alice Liddell, who grew up in Oxford but moved to Lyndhurst after marrying Reginald Hargreaves at Westminster Abbey in 1880.
Following her death in 1934 she was cremated and her ashes buried at St Michael and All Angels Church.
Alice Week has been devised by the New Forest Heritage Centre, which has recently been given books and other items by the Lewis Carroll Society.
The centre already had Mrs Hargreaves's mirror from Cuffnells, the family home on the outskirts of the village.
A spokesperson said: "The item is much loved by our younger visitors, who enjoy peering into this special looking glass and dreaming of tea parties and white rabbits."
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Alice Week will include an evening talk by Mrs Hargreaves's great-granddaughter, Vanessa Tait, who grew up in Gloucestershire.
The line-up also features hat-making, flowerpot painting and self-guided trails around the village, plus storytelling sessions and children's workshops.
Mrs Hargreaves was the daughter of Lewis Carroll's friend, Henry Liddell, who was vice-chancellor of Oxford University.
She was ten years old when she asked Carroll to tell her a story - and the resulting tale eventually evolved into Alice in Wonderland.
After moving to the New Forest Mrs Hargreaves became a society hostess and was also the first president of Emery Down WI.
In 1887 she was invited to a tea party held at Palace House, Beaulieu, to celebrate the coming of age of John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, the 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu.
Sadly two of her three sons, Alan and Leopold, were killed in action during the First World War.
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After her husband died in 1926 Mrs Hargreaves struggled with the cost of maintaining Cuffnells on her own and was forced to sell some of her Alice in Wonderland memorabilia.
In 1932 she went to America to attend celebrations held to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth.
But she was left exhausted by all the publicity and attention her trip produced and died aged 82 a couple of years later.
Cuffnells became a hotel for a short time but was requisitioned during the Second World War and used by a searchlight battalion before being demolished in the early 1950s.
Alice Week begins on Friday and runs until June 2.
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