Doll's teaparty

Dolls and tea sets excavated from the Former Coach and Horses hotel. Mary Ellen O’Meara was the only girl amongst the seven O’Meara children. She lived with her family who ran the Coach and Horses Hotel, on the Maroondah Highway in Ringwood in Melbourne’s outer east. Opened in the 1850s, the hotel burnt down on October 23, 1907, when Mary Ellen was seven.
The fire that destroyed the Coach and Horses Hotel started at 3.30 in the afternoon. At the time of the fire, Mary O’Meara was out driving with friends, and although Cornelius, (or Nobby) was at home in the parlour with the couple’s children, all managed to escape. No one was injured in the blaze. However, the building, along with all the family’s belongings, was lost.
The hotel ruins were excavated in 2005 before the Eastlink motorway was built. Archaeologists found many artefacts, including a large assortment of toys. Although many families with young children had lived at the hotel over the years, the manufacturing date of the artefacts and the stratigraphic contexts in which they were found, have allowed the archaeologists to conclude that the toys belonged to the O’Meara children.
Fragments from 16 porcelain dolls were found at the Coach and Horses Hotel. It is likely that some of the fragments found were bought to repair or replace broken dolls – even so, it seems that Mary Ellen was the owner of a variety of different types and sizes of dolls.