The Collection of Eric Knowles

Yesterday evening I spent a few hours with Bill Knowles over at his rather nice place overlooking the Roding valley in Essex. The purpose of this visit was to help Bill formulate the plan for the disposal of his father's substantial collection of wargames material.

I knew that Eric had a large set up - I recall seeing boxes and display cases full off figures and other bits and pieces of wargames paraphernalia at their old house in Seven Kings - but what I saw yesterday evening was off the scale. Bill and his wife own a couple of horses (whom I met, and very nice they are as well in that horsey way - for the equine enthusiast they are Irish Cobs) and so also own a motor horsebox. This at the moment is home to roughly a third of Eric's collection....

The horsebox has a side opening door and when Bill lowered the flap all I could see were boxes and boxes and boxes of figures, scenery and other bits and pieces reaching nearly to the roof. Bill mentioned that he had the same amount again still to be moved as well as a double garage at his holiday home full of books....

In order to restore the horsebox to its rightful use Bill is having the double garage loft boarded out so that the collection can be stored and sorted prior to disposal or whatever he decides to do with it.

Just to whet the appetite (and I apologise for the lack of photographs - to be honest I was too bemused and befuddled to take any!) I saw a substantial chunk of Eric's Early 18th century collection including French, English, Bavarian, Dutch, Prussian and Ottoman Turkish armies. The figures are a mixture of Minifigs, a lot of Les Higgins, Hinton Hunt and even Front Rank. The armies are not complete as the boxes forming the collection were not packed in any particular order so half are at Bills whilst the remainder are still at Erics. What I saw though, was a good sample and, if I am honest, I recognised some old friends amongst the collection from games fought long ago. There were even some of the figures from the Madasahatta campaign - British artillery in tropical uniforms and a whole pile of unpainted natives destined to form the Whoppituppa tribe.

Some of the kit to be frank has seen better days - Bill and I had a chuckle over a couple of Bellona rubber buildings that were so old the rubber had in fact perished - and so will be consigned to the bin but the main bulk of the collection, particularly the 18th century stuff, is in good order.

In later life Eric was heavily involved in WW2 games and so he accumulated a vast amount of kits and figures (all 20mm) for the period. There are untold boxes of plastic models that have not even been taken out of the packaging as well as copious amounts of period specific terrain and fortifications.

I should also point out that Eric had a large 1/1200th scale naval set up which has not surfaced yet - this is with the remainder of the collection - and contains a large number of Mercator, Viking and other manufacturers models.

The plan at this stage is firstly to get the loft boarded so that the collection has a home. During this part of the process Bill and I will be sorting the boxes into period specific collections and then we can see exactly what we are dealing with.

It is going to be a long job for sure.