Water Line Model Battleship
In March 2016, one of the members of the North Downs Young Archaeologists Club group found a model battleship at the site of a former RAF camp in Shorne Woods Country Park. Subsequent research has discovered the model battleship was made by TreForest Mouldings Ltd who manufactured a range of Water Line model ships from 1930 to 1939/40.
TreForest Moulding Ltd (also known as TreMo) was set up in South Wales in the early 1930s by a model maker who previously worked for the Wiking Model company, Germany. A number of Wiking’s model makers emigrated to Britain and America in the 1930s as the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany made life difficult for them and their families. TreMo made a whole range of 1/1200 scale model ships, the majority being based on British ships. Unfortunately at the beginning of WWII the owner was interned as an enemy alien and TreMo went into liquidation.
It is likely that the model found is of a Leander Class Cruiser (http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk) that were constructed throughout the 1930s and served with the RN, RNZNS and RANS. HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles were famous examples of the Leander class light-cruiser that, along with the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, took part in the Battle of the River Plate in 1939 resulting in the destruction of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.