Outside the well-kept bungalow that Sally shares with her parents there is nothing to suggest this is anything but an ordinary Dorset home. Nothing to suggest it’s also home to some 50 dolls, including a hoofed chap that looks like a resident of Narnia and a unicorn centaur called Paris.

“I’ve always liked all sorts of dolls, always played with them when I was a kid,” says Sally, leading me into the sitting room.

“My parents would make them furniture and I liked to make them clothes.”

Bournemouth Echo:

As a child she went through Pippa dolls, porcelain dolls and dolls houses and while searching the internet a few years back, “as you do,” for something that wasn’t anything to do with dolls at all, stumbled across some small and perfectly-formed sneakers for sale.

She shows me a little pair of mauve, faux-Converse.

“They lace up, they are perfect in every way,” she says.

Attracted, she researched what type of dolls could wear them and, in the manner of Alice in Wonderland, fell into the rabbit-hole that is the world of BJDs (Ball-Jointed Dolls).

Bournemouth Echo:

Custom-made in resin, the cost of each one can run into hundreds of pounds, she explains. “There are lots of different companies and they offer a range of facial sculpts. Some are more doll-like, some are very realistic.”

No kidding. I first saw Sally’s dolls on her Flickr feed and had to do a double-take because they were so spookily life-like. Why, I’m not sure – their wide, staring eyes and luminous skin don’t look like anyone I’ve ever met. But they are strangely compelling.

Perhaps it’s their size; at one third scale they would dwarf your average Barbie and their physique is a lot more believable. Or maybe it’s because of their clothes; Sally and her family make them all, from perfect jeans with zips and pockets or little knitted socks. You can get them underwear but, Sally says, she doesn’t really bother with that.

Does she play with them?

“Yes,” she says.

“I don’t think I ever really stopped. I think everyone in the hobby would say ‘we play with dolls’.”

Does she make up stories about her dolls?

“I actually have made photo stories for them; they’ve got a bit of a soap opera going on,” she reveals.

Then she asks if I’d like to meet some of her dolls and so I find myself gazing upon the immaculately-attired Lizzie and Robin.

“Robin’s a man,” says Sally. She knows this because BJDs are anatomically correct.

I’m glad she put me right on this because, with his cascading locks (a detachable wig) he certainly looks in touch with his feminine side.

“He used to be in a boy-band,” she says, explaining that she used a picture of him as her screensaver and: “A colleague once asked if he was my daughter. I do have a thing for blokes with long hair.”

So are Lizzie and Robin in a relationship?

“They are married.”

And, before you wonder, yes, they had a wedding. It took place in Sally’s conservatory and she took a week off work from her clerical job to organise it.

“It did take a lot of planning because I made most of the clothes and had flowers and decorations to set the scene,” she says. With help from her sister, Sally produced a miniature wedding breakfast, including a heart-shaped cake, plus tiny Battenberg cake and cocktail food including mini cornichons. “We ate it afterwards.”

Sally photographed the whole event and passes me the album where I flip through image after image; Lizzie getting ready with her bridesmaids, Lizzie with her dad, Harry, who is giving her away. There is Robin and his family; the vows, the formal portraits, “The page boy is Robin’s younger half-brother,” Sally explains. “That’s his step-dad and his mother.”

I am knocked out by the attention to detail and the love which has gone into putting on this extraordinary event.

Bournemouth Echo:

She shows me her bedroom in which her other dolls live, all seated on different sofas made – extremely well – by her and her family, and with lots of items she’s collected for them to use, including their own mini iPad: “It’s a make-up mirror shaped like one!”

She shows me Paris, a Centaur who converts into a unicorn, and Orlando who, instead of legs, has large and extremely disturbing hooves. I know she loves them but these two totally creep me out, especially when she starts affixing Paris’s unicorn horn and explaining that you can remove their faces and ‘pull the (magnetic) hands off the babies’, for ease of dressing...

She explains a few technical terms including ‘face-ups’ (make-up) and ‘modding’, where you change the appearance, perhaps with a light sanding of their facial features or ‘chop bits off’ their bodies.

Then Sally takes me outside to show me the gardens; beautiful little outdoor spaces particular to certain families. Here is Lizzie and Robin’s swing-seat; here their garden shed. The next garden belongs to another of her doll families. Her most recent addition is a tiny pond and balustrade, strong enough for her to lean on, so she can pose up her dolls for yet more adventures.

Bournemouth Echo:

It’s all so sweet and innocent that I hesitate to ask the next question. But I must.

Isn’t this all a bit weird?

“It is a bit weird,” she smiles.

But in a world where folk are happy to put photos of their naked bits on the internet, or hunt foxes to death before wiping their blood on their children, is it really?