It takes ladies to raise a village...

A group of talented and dedicated ladies in Kent have spent over 20 years knitting replicas of every building in their community - to scale.

There's a beautiful Norman church, two pubs, a shop, a school, a village hall, a huge Georgian manor house with landscaped gardens, teenagers slouched around the bus shelter and dozens of red-brick cottages with gardens in full bloom and vegetable patches bursting with cabbages, cauliflowers and sweet peas…

In fact, the whole thing looks rather, well . . . home-made. Which is no surprise, because every inch of this village - Mersham, in Kent - has been lovingly knitted by a small group of very twinkly ladies who started 23 years ago with a couple of cottages and some pigs, and ended up creating more than 60 properties, complete with wheelie bins, outdoor loos, gas tanks, cars in the driveways and even a smart red telephone box.

It's a charming story, with more details - and several dozen photos - at the Daily Mail.