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My good friend Sandy Botond (from Houston..oops..I meant Katy, Texas) has constructed several buildings for the ECW project for me.
Here's pic of the farmhouse. I'm really looking forward to getting these buildings onto the table. I'll need to pick up some Foundry civilians and appropriate animals (sheep and herding dogs) to make this complete..
Here is a picture of the windmill that Sandy has built for the ECW game. This will look great not only with ECW but with SYW and my extensive 25/8mm Napoleonic collection.
Being an American and Texan, I don't have a good mental concept of an enclosure. I've Googled some pictures and it seems as if enclosures look a lot like hedgerow country in Normandy. Any help would be appreciated. The same question applies to field stone walls. Kinda' a weird question but living in upper New York state as a kid, we used to play and make forts out of stones found on field walls. We were always told these walls were constructed because the farmers didn't have a place to store the stones they turned/cleared when plowing.
Here is a snap of the pub Sandy built for me. I'm keeping the name of the pub close to the vest. We've got a few good names in mind however! :)
Cavalry pictures will be forthcoming this weekend. They're progressing quite well. Everything I've read points in the direction that cavalry units had no "uniform" appearance other than the sash each side wore early in the war. I'm not painting these units with uniform sleeves, etc. but am painting them with buff coat and sleeves. I'm planning on building the ensigns to where I can interchange flags. I should be able to use each stand interchangeably.Now...to those club men. Where can I get club men? Should I just use farmers, civilian rioting mobsters, guys with pitchforks and torches (ala Frankenstein movies) or what. I'm just full o' preguntas today. Any help would be appreciated.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteExcellent looking buildings! For clubmen, try Redoubtenterprises.com.
Jon
Enclosures vary widely in nature - even on our small island. For instance, in East Anglia hedgerows tend just to be planted on field boundaries are are pehaps 4 - 6 feet in height; here in Wet Wales, they tend to be made up of a bank of cleared stones, now grown over with grasses and weeds, with the hedge on top. The banks can be up to 6 feet high with another 2 to 6 feet of hedge planted on the top, for a totsl height of 4 - 12 feet. Perhaps you can get some hi-res images from Google earth?
ReplyDeleteByrhtelm...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info byte. People in the US just don't have any frame of reference for this. I live on approx. 2 acres and all the lots in our area are about the same size. Definitely no "zero lot lines" in our neighborhood. :) I'll pass this on to my terrain for painted Napoleonics friend. I definitely want to get enclosures right if my project is going to be seen in public.
Again...THANKS!!!
The buildings are fantastic - thanks for the pictures. If you are looking for clubmen, the Wargames Factory has a pre-order program for plastic miniatures. One of the models is a 17th century armed civilian (clubs, farm implements, dirks, etc) - designed to be useful as a clubman. here is the link
ReplyDeleteThanks Chuck! I'm kinda' put out by the Wargames Factory "pre-order" system. I understand why they're doing it the way they are but am tired of them playing around with their finicky fans. :) They need to quit jacking around, produce some sprues and let's rock from there!
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteMost of England was open heath and scrubland in the 17C. The 'typical' English landscape of a patchwork of fields woods and hedgerows did not come about until the changes in agriculture brought the 'enclosures' of the late 18C.
Medieval farming was done on strips of large unfenced communal fields. Only around villages would you find small areas of hedged and fenced enclosures.
Hedges were also different usually they were formed by leaving strips of woodland standing between large fields. Remember in one battle Prince Rupert grew exasperated with firing coming from dragoons in a hedgerow, he rode up the middle of the hedge and the dragoons shot out of either side.
I would model a raised bank with hedge on top and use this where it occurs alongside a road. smaller flatter hedges mixed with hurdles or wattle fencing would be right around villages and large boundary type hedges are really thin strips of woodland.
Land was poorly drained so rough patches of reed and marsh would be fairly common. Other wise open grassland.
Houses (and Churches would be thatched in the south of england with red or stone tiles in the North or Cotswolds and on expensive buildings.
Of course if you do all this you will have a much better landscape than almost any English wargamer bothers with.
And clubmen just wear civilian dress which is just the same as soldiers dress, a few pikes and muskets and maily improvised weapons, though no bows by that date.
best of luck with the project.
John