Newark on Trent: The Unexpected Birthplace of Warhammer
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To be fair, I'm not sure why the story of this hasn't been turned into a Netflix series yet, it's got all the makings of one (Think '80's Midlands Nerd-Chic, Nostalgia, the forming of a worldwide phenomenon. It would have a fantastic cast and a fudging awesome 80s rock soundtrack ). Games Workshop , you should probably get on that
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But.....I digress
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Have a trundle down Victoria Street today and you might never guess that behind one of its unassuming façades, a worldwide cultural juggernaut was forged. Before the sprawling headquarters in Nottingham, before the billion pound global brand, before entire universes of orcs, space marines, daemons and dwarfs took over imaginations across the planet... there was Newark-on-Trent.
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Yes. Newark. Our Newark.
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Our market town, better known for its castle, civil wars and cobbled markets, is in fact the true birthplace of Warhammer, THE biggest tabletop gaming phenomenon on Earth (no understatement here, its MASSIVE, and played by some famous faces too such as Henry Cavill , Robin Williams, Brian May and Ed Sheeran to name a few)
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And its story is one of creativity, eccentricity, and East Midlands determination, the perfect mix that made fantasy gaming history.
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The tale begins in 1977 with Bryan Ansell, in a riverside warehouse tucked among the yards of Millgate(the old millgate museum to be specific). There, a tiny team produced white metal miniatures for role playing games. The operation was modest, three staff and simple machinery “the size of a washing machine”. Yet the creativity pouring out of that little warehouse like council pop would soon reshape gaming forever.
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It was led by Bryan Ansell who started his life in wargames by founding and designing for his own miniatures company Asgard Miniatures. He also had his own fanzine named Trollcrusher.
By 1978–79, Games Workshop (then a small London outfit run by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone) partnered with that very same local creative powerhouse Bryan Ansell to form Citadel Miniatures Ltd, deliberately choosing Newark as their base of operations (. The company was set up to allow Games Workshop to be self reliant for its miniature purposes, allowing her to create the miniatures for all the games which Games Workshop had the license for at the time.
In 1980 Ansell wrote his first wargaming rules called Laserburn which he had published via Tabletop Games. Although only a foot note in gaming history, Laserburn contained many elements and war gear of the future Warhammer 40,000 game, such as Power Armour, Dreadnoughts, Jet Cycles and Bolt Guns.
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Even back then, the area between Newark and Nottingham was quietly becoming the beating heart of the UK wargaming scene. Competitions, model makers, rule writers, and artists all seemed to gravitate toward the East Midlands. Newark was perfectly placed, affordable, connected, industrious, and brimming with talent.
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By 1981, Citadel had flourished enough to move into a larger and far more pleasant Victorian building at 10 Victoria Street, a location that should honestly have a blue plaque of its own. (some know it as Coopers Dressing Gown Factory, some know it now as apartment)
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It was here, in this ordinary town-centre building, that something extraordinary was about to happen.
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In 1983, inside 10 Victoria Street, three men (Bryan Ansell, Rick Priestley, and Richard Halliwell) developed a medieval-fantasy miniature wargame that would be given away for free to customers so as to encourage them to buy more miniatures. Dungeons & Dragons did not require players to use miniature figurines, and even when players used them, they rarely needed more than a handful. The result was Warhammer Fantasy Battle, it was published by Games Workshop in 1983 as a boxed set of three books. It was a fantasy mass combat wargame featuring core rules, creature lists, and an introductory scenario.
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Not in a slick design studio.
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Not with computers.
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But on a plastic drawing board, a Xerox word processor that printed like a typewriter and a photocopier
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The team of eleven (managed by Bryan and his wife Diane) produced a three volume rules set with illustrations by Tony Ackland and box art painted by Newark’s own fantasy artist John Blanche, including the iconic painting of Harry the Hammer, the barbarian who became the face of early Warhammer.
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What happened next changed everything......
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Warhammer, born in a Newark office with barely enough equipment for a school art project, absolutely exploded.
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Ansell made a significant move by acquiring Games Workshop (GW) from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the company's founders. He assumed the role of managing director at GW, steering the company towards an era of expansion and innovation.
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Demand surged. Citadel’s workforce jumped from 13 to 200. The company grew so fast that Games Workshop moved operations to the East Midlands (it was a pretty big thing to move operations out of London to the Midlands at the time). Citadel became a brand under the GW umbrella, relocated to bigger premises in Eastwood, then later to Nottingham , eventually evolving into the global gaming behemoth we know today.
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But its DNA?
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Its soul?
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Its spark?
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All Newark.
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Long after leaving Games Workshop, Bryan and Diane Ansell bought the magnificent Stoke Hall at East Stoke , and transformed it into the home of Wargames Foundry, another world leading miniature manufacturer who still produced many of the original Citadel designs cast in Newark in the 1980s, preserving the town’s artistic legacy in metal and resin.
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Stoke Hall hosted “Harry the Hammer and Friends”, the first-ever exhibition of early Warhammer art, including the original cover painting from 1983 (pictured). There, among elegant Georgian rooms, fans glimpsed the true origins of a global empire: the Newark sketches, Newark dioramas, Newark sculptures, Newark imagination.
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Many major miniature and wargaming companies in today’s Nottingham cluster, the so-called “Lead Belt” , trace their origins directly back to Citadel’s Newark years.
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Former staff went on to found:
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• Miniature Wargames magazine
• Wargames Illustrated
• Numerous independent sculpting and casting studios
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Millions of players worldwide paint Citadel miniatures, roll Warhammer dice, devour its lore and lose themselves in the sprawling universes born from those first Newark sketches. Many have no idea that their beloved hobby, the very heart of modern tabletop gaming, began not in London, not in America, not in a corporate boardroom……but in a Nottinghamshire market town with a castle, a civil war history, and a knack for creating legends.
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Newark on Trent shaped the world’s most successful fantasy gaming universe.
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And it’s time we told that story loudly.
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Newark is Warhammer history.
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And the world deserves to know.
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*And if this does get turned into a series, just remember I had the idea first, for any future lawsuits and whatnot
