Wallington Model Soldiers…

Despite the rain of yesterday my wife had arranged a day out at Wallington, a National Trust property in Northumberland with our good friends Katrin and Alan and their two kids. This is a regular venue for us and has frequent events, a nice cafe and good walks. And an outside play area that keeps the kids happy for a while! Having visited many times we don’t often go in to the house but today did. The house was the home for the Trevelyan family and the highlight for me is always a quick visit to the dolls house room which also houses the Trevelyan brothers collection of Model Soldiers. Now I’m sure I’ve asked in the past about taking photos and they always said no but today they said no flash but OK! Unfortunately I’d only got my phone with me which didn’t bode well for quality but here a few anyway.

Numbering 3000 plus they are housed in a glass case.

Now apparently the three Trevelyan brothers, George, Charles and Robert, spent many hours as boys refighting battles at the tail end if the 19th Century as is recounted here:

I’m not an expert on model soldiers of this period and the information available at the House is rather minimal, although I’ve a feeling they have a leaflet with more info on that wasn’t available). Although put together for refights of Napoleons battles (especially Waterloo) the vast majority of the figures are obviously of late 19th Century troops. I’ve already apologised for the camera but will do so again here. But the pictures at least give a good impression of what is there:

There’s some lovely little figures there and it would be nice if they had some more info on who made them etc.  However, at some stage the brothers obviously moved on in their gaming and there are also two original Kriegspiel sets:

It’s a nice little collection, for which so much more could be done. It’s well worth a visit if you are in the area.