In the comments on a recent post about French line artillery on Stryker's Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargames Figures blog there has been a little discussion about the Hinchliffe 20mm equipment range. These were generally reckoned the best 20mm equipment available, significantly better than Hinton Hunt guns and limbers, and with a slightly bigger range.
Although the moulds were lost a long time ago I was surprised how little known they appear to be even among aficionados of vintage 20mm figures so I am posting the listing and some photo from the 1972 Hinchliffe catalogue. They certainly deserve to be better known.
Below are two photos of a Peter Gilder French Old Guard Artillery crew with a Hinchliffe 20mm French 12 pdr gun.(These are Hinton Hunt figures which were originally owned by Peter Gilder).
A British 10" howitzer, suitable for both Napoleonic and Crimean Waes
British Colonial Elephant team and 40 pdr gun
4 sets, with the 40 pdr gun versions on each side and 2 sets with the 6.3" Howitzer in the middle. (I know the tubes of the 40 pdrs are in firing rather than travelling position but I didn't want to have any of the guns only in the travelling position This set was the first metal figures I ever saw, in a hardware shop in Durham in the early 1970s. I can't remember the cost but it was astronomical when Airfix figures had been 2/11 a box. More than 40 years later and with the help of eBay and others I now have about 12 sets of them, which may be overcompensating.
And finally a pair of British Colonial Baggage wagons. These came without horse teams or divers/crews, so these have been completed with S Range draught horses and Jacklex drivers.
10 comments:
Beautiful, Gilder was a brilliant sculptor.
Thanks for the post I wasn’t familiar with Hinchliffe’s 20mm range - to be honest I didn’t even know it existed, did it include Napoleonic figures or was it just equipment to supplement other figure manufacturers?
I was also intrigued by the Jack Scruby figure (?) posted on Miniature Minions - do you have many examples of that range as the Historifigs site has very few pictures.
Some great stuff there, particularly the elephants towing the gun.
Hi Robbie should have been clearer: the crew are from Peter Gilder’s collection, as far as I know the guns would have been by Frank Hinchliffe who was a master at that sort of thing
Rob it was just equipment. Hinchliffe’s only 20mm figures were the WWII range which later became Skytrex
I still have a pair of ancient old Hinchliffe German 105mm howitzers. They were a complete pig to assemble as I recall as I only had Araldite to stick them together with. No superglue in those days!
Martin those again of course are the WWII range. For a while they were sold in shrink wrapped packs under the name Caldercraft, then went to Skytrex. For a while they were sold as 20mm Zone, using the original masters for new moulds for metal and/or resin kits. A lot of the range is now with Early War Miniatures.
I still have a couple of French 8pdrs and limbers in my collection
This is another extremely useful post, VM. Cheers! WM
Hinchliffe started with a range of 54mm guns by Frank - the catalogue was a folder of separate pictures. Got one somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.
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