Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (From Bournemouth Echo)

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

8:00am Saturday 20th February 2010

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MOST children are familiar with the enchanting story of the young girl who stumbles down a rabbit hole, which leads to an astonishing adventure.

Next month the classic children’s book will be given a new lease of life with the release of director Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland film for Walt Disney Pictures.

All the usual Burton suspects star, including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter, as a truly bizarre Queen of Hearts.

If early trailers are anything to go by, audiences should be left grinning like Cheshire cats.

But did you know that one of the best-loved characters in children’s literature lived locally?

Alice Liddell, the little girl behind Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland stories, lived in the New Forest village of Lyndhurst, with her husband, Reginald Hargreaves, from 1881, and was buried behind the imposing brick-built Gothic church of St Michael and All Angels following her death in 1934.

Young Alice was the inspiration for the Alice of Lewis Carroll’s universally-loved Alice in Wonderland tales and recently, several rare early and first editions of the story, based on the experiences of Carroll’s meetings with her, fetched between £5,000 and £15,000 at an auction in an America.

Carroll first encountered the 10-year-old Alice and her two sisters during a boat trip on the River Thames, and subsequently penned Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, after more meetings.

The antique books were sold by American football star and children’s book collector Pat McInally, who describes Alice in Wonderland as “the most important children’s book ever written”.

The “real” Alice moved to the New Forest after marrying Reginald in Westminster Abbey in 1880, and she was the first president of Emery Down and Bank Women’s Institute, while her husband was a magistrate who also played cricket for Hampshire.

In fact the Hargreaves were very much steeped in the community – they were involved in several organisations and supported the schools, church events, flower shows, fetes and gymkhanas.

The place they called home was an 18th century mansion called Cuffnells, which stood at the centre of a 160-acre estate on the outskirts of the village.

Tragically, her own fairy-tale existence ended during the First World War when two of her three sons were killed in France.

Alice was buried beside Reginald.

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