david_scrivener

Two more farmyards from the later (assumed 1970) range. These are ebay photos, and the other item with the 2nd scan isn't Debtoy, just sold with the smaller Debtoy farmyard as a single lot on ebay.

Next, the castle, probably made about 1965. Although it is an excellent design as toy castles go, it is really too small for 1/32 knights, as is the case with most toy castles. A true to scale 1/32 castle would be far too big for a kid's bedroom. Now for some of Debtoy's later farm building range. Date unknown for certain, but most likely circa 1968-70 First two farmyards: There are more farmyards in this range. I will post some pictures from some sold on ebay later. Now, some individual buildings: It can be assumed that all the buildings featured on the farmyards from this period also exist as separate items.

Debtoy were based at Wyverstone, a village in Suffolk a few miles north of Stowmarket. I have not been able to discover how long they were in business, but would guess about 1955 to 1975. Their products were unashamedly 'toys' rather than 'models', but their ranges of farmyards and separate farm buildings were so extensive that I think them worthy of interest to collectors today. I don't know what other ranges they made apart from the farm buildings, but there were certainly some. The only other item I have is a splendid castle, which I will include in this thread. There may have been more castles, but beyond that it is pure guesswork. Possibilities, based on the ranges of other wooden toy building manufacturers, might include: western fort, western town, ranch, garage (for Dinky & similar cars) and dolls houses. First up are their farm buildings from circa 1962, a few of which I had back then as a kid. As you will see, some of my more recent purchases are in original boxes. First bull pen is made as a single unit, the other three are made with house and run as two separate pieces Two versions of the 'small pig sty', they did a 'large pig sty' with same size hut, but a longer run. Next a double small pig sty. Finally, some hen houses.

I can only suggest you look on ebay and do a general search for 'wooden toy tractor' or 'ride on toy tractor', see what comes up in commercially made similar items, and pinch their ideas.

I bought some interesting items at the fair, without spending too much overall. From Mandy, an O guage railway station platform made by Hugar with some nice period adverts, and a western town street with sheriff's office, saloon, bank and livery stable. Manufacturer unknown, at present I'm suspecting either Pennine Toys who were based in the Manchester area or Amersham Toys. From another stallholder I don't know, although think they have been there before, a few French made plastic farm animals, a sheep by Starlux and a cow, 2 calves and a turkey by Clairet. A few other plastic items from here and there, including an early Herald boar, in the earlier buff/tan colour before they changed to pink (I already have several, but it was only £1, so couldn't resist) and an unknown camel with a saddle, presumably for an arab to sit on. It'll keep me off the streets doing the research to identify this one. Best buy of the day was from a dealer who specialises in toy cars & similar. He had a job lot box of cars & plastic soldiers, and wanted £50 for the lot. He didn't want to sell individual items because he thought he'd be stuck with the soldiers because "they're only plastic". He accepted my offer of £15 for "just the soldiers", and looked at me as though I was mad for offering so much for what he apparently thought were worthless plastic toys. There were 25 figures, including a few broken, but were some nice early Herald Guardsmen & Khaki infantry, & some Timpo US GIs (an attractive set which were even nicer when first made in lead). I thought it was a good lot for the money, less than £1 each, but it got better when I took them back to my car and had a better look through them, one of the apparently Herald Khaki soldiers had the elusive circa 1953 Myer Zang trademark, so is easily worth the £15 on its own! For those who don't know, Myer Zang, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, started a little company in the then infant plastic moulded toy industry at the end of the war, and was taken over by Britains Ltd as 'Herald Miniatures Ltd', because Britains knew the industry was going to change to plastics, but being lead moulders, realised they didn't know anything about plastics, so they bought out Zang (then with Roy Selwyn-Smith & Kay Fido) to buy in the expertise they needed. The rest, as they say, is history.

Which all just shows how it is impossible to be completely accurate to scale in some aspects of toys/models, something recognised a century ago by wargamers and manufacturers of toy castles. In the case of castles, they compromised by making the places where toy soldiers/knights would actually be placed, such as gates and battlements, at least big enough to stand the figures, and settled for a pastiche of castleyness (not a real word, but I'm sure you all get the idea) for the rest. I'm guessing that for a field to display some of the bigger 1/32 machinery, say a combine + tractors, trailers & balers etc for a harvest scene a size of say 2 x 1 metres is as big as even those with a big display room will be able to provide.

OK, so here is my Cherilea farm collection, 3 photos of lead & 3 of plastic. They're not very good photos, which is why I didn't do a Cherilea section before. I usually only redo photos when I buy more figures, and I haven't bought any Cherilea recently.

Cherilea was formed 1946-47 by two ex JoHillCo people, Mr W. Cherrington and Mr J. Leaver, and you can see the company name was derived from their surnames. They had a registered office in Blackpool and their factory was in Burnley, until that closed, and then they had (a smaller?) factory also at Blackpool. They had connections with another small figure company, Fylde. Mr Cherrington had designed for JoHillCo, and did some freelance designing, plus moulds were traded between the three companies, especially during JoHillCo's last years before it closed down in 1960, which is why there is a lot of similarity and confusion about who made what. I'll add photos of my Cherilea figures shortly.

Talking of cars, and the immediate post-war period, I remember my (late) dad telling me about one of his earliest deals as a car trader & repairer. Just after the war he went to an auction of ex-military vehicles. He noticed some former staff cars, and also noticed that the camouflage paint came off very easily when he tried a bit with his fingernail, revealing excellent shiny black paint underneath. I forget how many of them he said he bought, but all they needed was a going over with a pressure hose, and they were 'ready to go', and very quickly sold, back in their former shiny black glory. He had a very easy decade or so making money in the car trade. Basically, if it worked, he could sell it. During the war, because he didn't want to be shot at, or sent to the other side of the world, he volunteered to be a 'Bevan Boy', in his case in an iron ore mine. he was near enough to home to be a bit of a 'spiv' on the side, so food rationing was something that happened to other people for him. My mother (still very much alive, & all brain cells fully functioning) had a very different war (they hadn't met then). She left school fairly early in the war, and became a wages clerk at a local factory near Leighton Buzzard, Beds. When she became 18 in 1943 she, like every clerical worker in the area, had to do certain 'aptitude tests' for unspecified reasons. She passed the maths & problem solving parts well enough to be conscripted to Bletchley Park for the rest of the war. Her job was to convert incoming coded messages into bundles of punch cards for the Collosus computer to decode. As a lowley operative the only war secret she ever knew was the date of D Day about a week in advance. Everyone was told this, and instructed to look out for any unusual German activity which might suggest they had sussed it.

Just arrived from an ebay purchase, a super old folding farmyard by ARCO models. I'll add photos in due course in the farm figures & accessories section, as I only have an old type film camera.

Looking at Bedfordshire in particular, you certainly wouldn't like the main urban area in the south of the county, the three towns of Dunstable, Houghton Regis and Luton, which effectively merge to form a city. But drive a few miles out and there are lots of really pretty villages and small towns with medieval cottages and churches. Drive a few more miles north and east, and there are the wide open fields of the main agricultural area. The land is very flat, with a lot commercial vegetable growing.

As I'm originally from Bedfordshire, I have to ask, do you know where in Bedfordshire they were from?

Old Hampshire? Not that I recall. As I grew up in Bedfordshire, most of the old country people I met when I was young had a East Anglian (ish) accent/dialect.

We know there are different accents in the US, but from what I know of them (& I take an interest in such things) fewer of them considering the size and population of the US, compared to the size & population of the UK. There are a lot of places here where the accent is completely different in places less than 50 miles apart. I doubt there are many such sharp differences in the US, apart from ethnic/cultural groups within some cities such as New York, and those sub-cultures equally exist in London. As you're in Arizona Rick, can I ask about the accents in the south-west of the US. We in the UK can easily tell a Californian accent is very different from a Texas accent. So how many identifiable accents (apart from 'Hispanics') are there in the very large, but sparsely populated states of Arizona and New Mexico in between?

The "Learning how to speak like someone from England," should be complicated. At least, it will be if they do it properly. I wonder how many members of her club realise how many English accents exist? And can they identify at least the main ones? And (a good test) tell the difference between rural West Country and rural East Anglia? (a lot of professional actors who should know better get those mixed up) As for the English food thing, they'd be better advised having a rule to eat the whole range of traditional English cheeses over say every 6 months. I get the impression that American cheese mainly consists of processed slices to put on burgers. Yuk.

Nice calf. I don't know who made it, but guessing Quiralu in France. Because of the 'action' pose, it might be from a cowboy ranch set, rather than a farm set, although Quiralu (or whoever) probably sold it in both, like the Britains running bullock & wild horse.

Looking through my files of toy buildings, I've found one of the farmyards in the top photo (slight colour differences, but otherwise identical). Vectis auction 21 March 2012 Lot 597 http://www.vectis.co.uk/Page/ViewLot.aspx?LotId=443859 The people at Vectis don't know who made it either, giving their usual description of such things, "Unconfirmed Maker similar to Hugar" (It isn't Hugar)

Young man! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rXIvckZ6tA

I thought 'the middle of nowhere' was in Utah, not Arizona. How do you think Mitt will get on when he goes to Poland and Israel? If it goes as badly as his trip here in the UK, some US Republicans might start thinking they chose the wrong Morman. Jon Huntsman is clearly an intelligent and sensible diplomat, and from a UK/European/worldwide perspective, by far the best of the primary candidates.

Farmyard photo #1: I don't know Cottage photo #2: I have several made by the same company, which I'm fairly sure was Peacock & Co @ 2 Prebend Street, Islington until 1931, when moved to 175-179 St John's Street. Taken over by Chad Valley in 1934, but continued to use Peacock name for some ranges until 1970. The farm buildings were a tiny part of their range of toys. They're probably best known for jigsaw puzzles.

Well done Sue! I hope you soon find the farmer's wife holding a hen. With my interest in poultry, this is obviously one of my favourite figures, and I don't know of any other similar figures.

Also sitting milking woman (170/3), woman with bucket (170/4), woman with sythe (170/5), shepherd (170/6), drover with whip (170/18). In short they all are, except I haven't seen the man leading bull as a Lineol, but he might have been later. This is from a 1937 Lineol catalogue, and the Timpo figures were probably designed about 1954.

Sue, Nice to have those mounted hunt people with their whips intact - they're broken off on most seen.

Not just me then with the auto censor! In my post above about T&B, I eventually wrote they 'recovered' the moulds after their factory was bombed, but only because the stupid auto censor wouldn't let me write salva- (gettiing creative here) -ged.

It is in the big yellow book, but quite tiny in the photo, bottom of page 236, and in the lists on page 333, B&S item #196 middle column. In addition to the box type hive made by JoHillCo, Pixyland/Kew made a slightly smaller one. There is also a chance that one of the French toy companies made a hive, which might turn up at a fair, although not many French made figures do.