Wallington House in Cambo, Northumberland (12 miles West Morpeth on B6342) has an enthralling collection of over 6,000 miniature lead soldiers, which were acquired in the 1880's by Charles, Robert and George, the three sons of Sir George Otto Travelyan. These are now to be seen in a special showcase in the same room as the dolls' house, drawn up in the armies of Napoleon, Blucher and Wellington, against a background painted for the occasion by Mrs. Pauline Dower, eldest daughter of the late Sir Charles Trevelyan. He and his brothers used to play the war game of Kriegspiel as boys, a complicated game in which the armies were first manoeuvred on maps with coloured blocks and then the final stages fought out with the soldiers on the floor of the Museum. A battle might take days to complete. It was to this early study of the war game that George Macaulay Trevelyan later attributed his own capacity for so vividly describing battles. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 114 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com