C is for Cavendish Miniatures

Back's still hurting from the ladder incident the other day and now I have a cold so like most men, I'm monging about the house uselessly doing nothing, convincing myself it's worse than it is! So more larger scale stuff from the archive tonight...

Tony Kite's Cavendish Miniatures is one of those funny little companies that comes, contributes lots of figures in various materials to the hobby, and goes leaving lots of questions?

I'm not going to answer them here, just look one of it's products, the Beefeater or Yeoman Warder. Strange that apart from a few cartoony tourist keepsake key-rings and the semi-lunatic Charbens moulding (check his face sometime!) this is the only decent Beefeater made in plastic.

Top Row, left to right, Cavendish with separate metal axe; separate plastic axe (both; Yeoman Gaoler) ; the Chief Warder's 'Tower' staff, in real life the tower model is silver; the halberd or pike (known as a partisan), and finally; the later moulding with integrated pike. Note the similarity of painting style between the left-hand and right-hand figures, the metal accessories must have been a late addition, I'd always assumed they came before the plastic staffs?

The moulding was exploited by Hong Kong copyists and the two to the right on the bottom row are examples of the second version Cavendish in hard plastic, over to the left is one pantographed up to 60mm.

Cavendish carried these HK copies themselves after they'd stopped producing the ethylene originals, sold singly and in sets of various sizes, a large window box contained this figure, a Lifeguard, Horse-guard, Policeman and Guardsman with a copy of the Britains sentry box.