Hinton Hornblower

This is a rather obscure find. They are figures from the Hinton Hunt range of Royal Naval Landing Party figures. The firing figures have a very typical Hinton Hunt pose clutching their ‘tree trunk’ muskets and shooting a bit high (perhaps at the rigging!).

The officer is a particularly nice figure in a suitably swashbuckling pose and was great fun to paint. They are:

BN123 Seaman Firing
BN120 Officer Charging

I also have a small group of Marines who will be joining them shortly for raiding missions against the French colonies!

The British are coming!

Over the time I have been collecting wargame figures I have only possessed a few British Napoleonic ones. At first I was interested in the foreign armies because I didn’t know much about them and they seemed quite exotic. Russians defending the great redoubt at Borodino, Austrians in their smart white uniforms and of course the Prussians arriving at Waterloo in the nick of time to save the day!

So it has been a pleasant surprise to find that I have accumulated a reasonable number of Hinton Hunt British figures. I guess these must be among the first of the figures released by Marcus Hinton and they are noticeably smaller than some of the other ranges and display some fine detail.

This picture shows (from left to right):
BN/7 Private (with separate musket)
BN/9 Private standing
BN/2 Sergeant charging
BN/5 Private charging

All these figures came from the same source via eBay and have been quite nicely painted. BN/7 is an interesting find – this figure would originally have been supplied with a separate musket that could then be glued to the figure enabling the creation of different poses. This figure is also useful for creating standard bearers (although the British range does already include these). All the figures pictured will (eventually) be stripped and re-painted by me. Click on the image for a closer look.

Thick n' thin

This is a picture of FN3 French Line Grenadier Firing. I picked up both of these figures from the same source but I suspect that only the one on the left is a genuine vintage Hinton Hunt figure. The figure has the HHF mark and FN3 code on the underside of the base which, as far as I know, was the case for all the figures made by Hinton Hunt Figures of Taplow.

The figure on the right was probably made later possibly from a mould made from an original figure. It lacks the same level of detail as the original and the metal is thicker in places – particularly on the shako plume. There are no markings at all under the base which suggests it is a later production or possible bootleg.

However, it may not be as simple as that as there is a fair bit of variation in quality even with the original Hinton Hunt figures. My Prussian Napoleonic army contained distinct variations within the same figure type (presumably there were several different production moulds in use at the same time) and not all castings were of great quality – however, the original figures did all have the HH codes under the base.

As I am a bit anal about having only vintage figures in my new HH army I probably won’t use any of the dubious figures unless I am short of numbers to make up units.

70’s Flashback…

I think this picture was taken in 1970. It shows part of my original Hinton Hunt Figures Prussian Napoleonic army on manoeuvres somewhere in the snow. Actually it was taken on my parent’s dining room table. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to create a ‘snowscape’ with flour – perhaps I watched too many episodes of Blue Peter!

The figures are:
PN77 Prussian Cuirassier Trooper Charging (one-piece casting)
A4/AL4/H1/H2/PN36/PN38 Complete Prussian Gun, Limber & Team with 4 horses, limber rider and outrider.

I eventually painted 24 of the Cuirassiers. It was heavy going preparing the figures because most of them had massive amounts of flash metal and I only had one very blunt file! The buildings were ‘SuperQuick’ cardboard models made for model railways – they weren’t very super quick to make as I remember.

Chasseur a Cheval

Here we have two French Chasseur a Cheval of the line. They are two piece castings consisting of separate rider and horse models. This can make the rider figures hard to identify as they don't have any HH codes on them. These ones are:
FN319 French Chasseur a Cheval in Shako
FNH7 Horse

Hinton Hunt horse models are quite distinctive and seem to look rather more like large dogs than horses to me! This just adds more to the quirky appeal of the figure range. The horses came with acres of flash metal attached that had to be removed prior to painting – another HH trait!

Borodino anyone?

This is the first of my finished units. It consists of 22 Russian Grenadier marching figures with 2 charging officers. When I started wargaming the 24 figure infantry unit was standard so I am trying to keep to the same establishment where possible with my new army.

The figures are listed in the Hinton Hunt catalogue as:
RN17 Russian Grenadier Marching
RN11 Russian Officer Charging

The castings are original vintage HH figures that had never been painted before. I am pleased with the result although not completely happy with the shade of green I chose for the uniform. Despite having the complete set of Foundry colours I couldn’t find one that looked right.

These guys took me over four months to complete, mainly because I kept changing my mind on the style of basing. In the end I settled on plasticard bases with the figures mounted in threes. This method fits in with the retro look and also shows off the quirky HH figure bases which are square with rounded corners.

What's in the Box?

About a year ago I saw some Hinton Hunt Carabineers on Ebay and decided to buy them for old times sake. This was possibly a mistake as several purchases later I now have close on 400 vintage HH figures and the number is growing!

From a little twinge of nostalgia, my Hinton Hunt collecting has turned into a bit of an obsession. My aim now is to collect, strip and repaint enough original vintage HH figures to make two opposing wargame armies presented in the ‘Old School’ style – the way I started wargaming back in the 60’s.

This blog is the story of that attempt – so turn down your anorak hood and enjoy!

Take a look in the box (click on the image for a closer look)…