Citadel Miniatures and Wargames Foundry

In 1983 Bryan Ansell and Diane Lane started a new company called Bryan Ansell Miniatures Ltd. that traded as Wargames Foundry.  In 2000 the name was changed to Foundry Miniatures Ltd,  continuing to trade as Wargames Foundry.  

In 1983 Bryan and Diane also both worked at and managed Citadel Miniatures. Citadel was previously owned by Bryan Ansell, Steve Jackson and Sir Ian Livingstone.  Following Bryan’s exit and sale of his Citadel shares to Steve & Ian, by 1983 Citadel had become a division of Games Workshop and Bryan had been asked to return to manage it.    

With the success of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, that was written and published at Citadel in 1983, coinciding with Clifford Ansell, Bryan’s father, taking early retirement, old Citadel ranges and models that were discontinued or no longer suitable for sale by Citadel, including all rights, were transferred to Wargames Foundry where it started trading from Cliff’s garden shed.  

The practice of transferring Citadel ranges, models, test sculpts and all sorts of oddities with all of their rights continued throughout the 1980’s into the early 1990’s and Games Workshop is not permitted to produce those models.  

Over the years some Citadel/Games Workshop staff, who were better suited to working at a small company, also moved to work at Wargames Foundry.   

During the 1980s Bryan became a major shareholder of Games Workshop and Steve and Ian were also Directors of Bryan Ansell Miniatures Limited. 

In 1991 Bryan and Diane also founded Guernsey Foundry Ltd. which traded from Guernsey independently of Wargames Foundry.  Guernsey Foundry was closed in 2000 and its ranges were then transferred to Wargames Foundry.  

Each year for the annual Oldhammer, Bring Out Your Lead event that is held at Foundry, we have a good rummage through our hundreds of archive moulds dating from the 1980’s and  try to release or re-release something exciting.  Occasionally we will discover some long lost treasure in our master castings storage system that had been mislabelled or returned to the wrong storage box many decades ago. 

Diane Ansell (nee Lane)

You can see our full range of citadel models here.