ONE of Hampshire’s top attraction is looking even more magical than usual.

The award-winning National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, is celebrating the opening of a new topiary display based on the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland.

Staff are dressed up as characters from the timeless tale, including the White Rabbit and Alice herself.

Visitors can enjoy an Alice in Wonderland-style tea party in the Brabazon Restaurant, with treats including White Rabbit biscuits, Cheshire Cat cupcakes and marshmallow caterpillars.

Alice herself is often to be found playing croquet on the lawns of Palace House, ancestral home of the Montagu family since 1538.

In keeping with the museum’s main theme, an Austin Clifton car is being driven around the attraction by the Mad Hatter.

Alice in Wonderland was written in 1865. Author Lewis Carroll based the central character on Alice Liddell, the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Henry Liddell, who was vice-chancellor of Oxford University.

Years later Alice and her new husband Reginald Hargreaves moved to Lyndhurst, where they lived in a large house called Cuffnells.

She died in 1934 and is buried at St Michael and All Angels Church in Lyndhurst.

A Beaulieu spokesman said: “It’s a little-known fact that Alice once visited Palace House herself for a tea party to celebrate the coming of age of the Hon. John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, the 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, back in 1887.”