Collection History

" I started collecting as a schoolboy, with flint tools found on an uncle's farm, progressing to various old hand tools etc, then later old farm implements and machinery. The first military items were bits and pieces father had saved from his Home Guard days, a Devon's cap badge, 9mm Sten and US 30.06 bullets, and a real prize, a drill No.69 Anti Tank Grenade. Bayonets and various militaria followed, eventually settling on the 1939/45 period, with British, Canadian and Commonwealth as my main interest.

A natural progression was the purchase of a WW2 vehicle, a Canadian C8HUP, as I know now, much modified. Various others followed, the first tracked vehicle being the Windsor Carrier. The Centaur, and later the Churchill from Pound's were the first tanks, and getting these running after 20 or more years in a scrap yard was quite a challenge. The first tank is always the worst, because you have nothing to move it with. In the late eighties, I helped a friend Dave Freeman, unloading and selling, several shipments of surplus Warsaw Pact equipment, and acquired for myself a WW2 T34/85 tank and it's successor, a T54, now standing alongside their Cold War opponent, (later to fight in the Gulf War), a 1949 British Centurion tank.

Why is the collection at Cobbaton ? Simple, we lived there, my contracting business was based there, and my uncle offered to sell me some ground there, which made it the cheapest place to set up. "


The collection has survived without any government grants or handouts, and is still growing, with over 70 military vehicles and artillery pieces, and literally thousands of smaller items from 1939/45. The latest large addition was a 1944 British 17 Pdr Anti Tank gun. Visitors find the quantity and range of items restored and preserved over the last 50 years quite mind boggling.

Last updated 8/03/2008