Battle of Althorp - 26th December 1745: Part One - Introduction and making the terrain

 

Althorp game - The Origin

This game took place in mid September and had been trailed on the blog back in March as part of my 2022 programme of custom-made terrains. Dedicated readers will recall I committed myself to build the central part of the Waterloo battlefield for JP in August, and the "how-to" on that is here. So there you can see the table built from the bottom-up and finished in its June  2015 (too?) brightness. I told Guy Barlow he'd have to adapt that battlefield for his Jacobite game only a month later and he came up with a brilliant suggestion.   In his "what-if" 1745  campaign the Jacobite Army had reached the English Midlands by December 1745. He decided that the area round the Althorp estate near Northampton would fairly be represented by our Waterloo field. Handily the village of Harleston was just about the right scale distance away to take the place of La Haye and Pappelotte, with the manor taking up the footprint of La Haye Sainte and a bit extra.

The main challenge for me was to fit in making, within a month, the buildings and change the terrain from Summer fields to 26th December in the chilly English countryside, and include a week's holiday in Northumberland. We did not want full snow for obvious reasons but I promised to give it a different feel. This blog post attempts to show you how I did it.

Steve J and Richard enjoy a joke at the start of Day Two of our weekend of a wintry-looking Battle of Althorp

As a reminder here is the map I provided to Guy for him to plan the scenario and from which I took the extra detail we needed - the buildings, winter trees, frozen ponds and the formal but dormant garden. The dark brown line shows the 12 x 6 foot table limit though we allowed deployment outside that area. at the start.

Althorp Terrain - The Buildings

I'd never had the chance to recreate an English stately home on the wargames table before and the "duchess" and I had free entry to Althorp Manor with our membership of Historic Houses.  As we could pass that way en route to our northern holiday it made sense to make a brief visit. However Guy and I had done a bit of research and I knew that the present day edifice is about 1780, too late for 1745, so could I find out anything useful?

Old Harleston cottages

I quizzed a guide on lots of things and he was very helpful. The estate is vast, way beyond the  miles of perimeter walls I had seen (coincidentally not far off the brown lines on my map), and Harleston village is owned by the family, and properties rented out. I noted there are two parts to Harleston, a large one on the main A road (roughly the northern road on our map) and a more rural one about a mile South. I had to ignore that and compromise for our purposes, but hey, this is not history it's a "what-if". Most importantly he confirmed what I suspected, that the big house there in 1745 would have been the original mid 16th Century Tudor manor. Evidently that was upgraded, expanded and clad in fashionable Georgian brick and decoration in 1780. But wait - what of that magnificent square stables and coach house? Surely contemporary with the upgrade? No it was built around 1730 and was one of the grandest stables in England. So I would have to make a reasonable facsimile of that.

One entrance to the magnificent Stables and Coach house

Arched  West entrance to the Stables, and goes right through
to the other entrance/exit seen above

Inside the Stable courtyard

The 1780s Manor built over the shell of the Tudor manor beneath the brick and tile. West Wing in the foreground, East wing further back, and main entrance is at right of photo between the two wings

In recent years I've been very attracted to downloadable card architecture. Usually you can find something suitable by an internet search, often free. Of course you have to print them on card and often work out what size to set the print. It can be tricky but I love the freedom to decide the scale/size and adapt to the required footprint on the table versus looking OK with the figures. In the Althorp game, all except the "hunting lodge", which was our indulgence and fictitious, were buildings I made specially and range from 25mm down to about 12mm size, but hopefully look OK in their places. Judge for yourselves.

Tudor Althorp Manor finished and now I was working on the base and entrance courtyard. It will be portable and reusable. I had to use ingenuity to get coherent shapes and sizes from my printed pages, but "converting" in card models, just with scissors, is easy. I usually give quite a bit of weathering to my card models to avoid them looking too stark. I wanted this Althorp to look 200 years old by 1745.

 Finished in situ. In the distance the Stables are ready to be placed in the prepared footprint

Like this. I took liberties with the detail and where the entrances are; I was really trying to convey the character but much reduced in size, while still being useful for play.  This building was practically new in 1745, and so little weathering. Guy decided he wanted a garrison of 200, made up of the 100 stable boys I was told it was built to house, plus another 100 from servants and grooms etc accompanying the Duke of Cumberland's and Earl Spencer's households staying over Christmas. This made a unit of about 20 figures.

Below: Various views of my interpretation of that part of Harleston village we needed on our table

These cottages and barns were fun to make as I printed several copies of the basic sheet and "kit-bashed" to get the shapes I wanted to fit the table footprint I had allowed. The thatched roofs were just made with plaster, sawdust, PVA and paint and roughly scored and shaped as they dried. They are probably a good match for 12mm figures one-to-one. But we were to use 28mm figures at approximately 1:10 or 1:15.

The deliberately small Church is intended for 25mm figures and is from a delightful basic village set designed about 15 years ago by Brian Collins, a highly talented Cheltenham graphic artist and painter.
Wicker plastic fencing from Renendra.

I've added a churchyard full of gravestones and crosses. This is the plastic set by Renendra available widely on the internet (25/28mm)

You can get downloadable versions for yourself of the card sheets I used by going through the "18th Century Historical" link to Althorp in the right hand "Downloads" sidebar, or use this quick link- card models for Althorp buildings. Just a thought - card models are mostly biodegradable; unlike plastic or resin or 3D printed models they will eventually degrade and leave little damage to the planet or clog up landfill. That matters to me but each wargamer to his own conscience.......

Here is the "hunting lodge" - just a cottage with a small footprint
I had in my box already

Althorp Terrain - The Groundwork

Buildings give any game its main character which is why I put them first, but I'm way ahead of myself  as the first thing I actually had to do once "Waterloo" was cleared off was tone down June and make it December.  The first part of that was getting a wide brush and various watered down acrylics in browns and creams and brushing any of the fields which appeared too bright (most of them!) to give them a dullness which was pleasing without being too uniform or boring. Here it is:

The second stage once dry was to switch to a similar wide brush, but this time dry brushing with various off-whites and creams. The aim was to give a cool look as when, in Winter, we look across frosty fields and see a haze of white tops. On sunny days this soon melts away, but on cold, cloudy days it can stay all day. Since we were doing mid-Winter that seemed appropriate to me. However, I still wanted to use this battlefield another time and expected to recolour it. I did not want to do that to the roads so I did not white-dry-brush them.

Above and Below: Dry brushing with an off-white mix

I fixed in place some hardboard bases to mark the Harleston Built Up Areas (BUAs) and the big village pond, and the smaller pond by the Manor (which I put in the former La Haye Sainte sandpit)

The pond bases were done early before any recolouring

The Icy Ponds

Many of you will have seen the fun I've had with rivers, streams and ponds on my previous terrain blog posts, and I'm secretly hoping you'll be thinking "he's experienced at this so I'll learn how to do it properly." Nothing could be farther from the truth as I've never done any "sculpted terrain" frozen water before (I'm not counting the lakeside at a frozen Fort William Henry on my sand table in about 2011). So I was making it up as I went along, all the while keeping part of my brain as landscape artist and recalling those dark wintry ponds seen on my walks. The basic mid brown (with PVA in it to give a certain waterproofing) seen above was to serve me as a solid surface on which to build. But first I wanted to set the ponds in their landscape so did not resume till I'd got the fields recoloured, the sandy banks rendered with "gunge" and sawdust, and the winter trees in place. (The trees I did for the Brampton Jacobite game in Spring 2021 see here)

Above and Below: I was satisfied that the variable browns on the base gave some variety and did not need more paint at this stage, so I stuck various sizes of tufts to look natural around the edges and growing out of the water.

A bit of smearing at the edges happened by chance as I tried to clear off excess powder from the "muddy" banks. As my old art master, Eric Ford, used to say "turn your mistakes to advantage" (when creating art). This is just 3D art so let's be free and imaginative to get a good result. I thought it looked OK - ponds getting shallower at the edge

Now it was time to try to give some glazing and watery look. You could just use many coats of gloss varnish but at this stage I went for a large dollop of PVA as I wanted the weight of the viscous liquid to penetrate round the reedy tufts, aided by my brush where necessary. It dries clear but I wanted to add a bit of Winter "magic" so judiciously mixed in a little blue acrylic paint. It was an experiment.

Completely coated and would take about a day to dry properly

Gradually being absorbed and I could see that it was staining the painted
 hardboard darker - ideal!

This was looking better than I expected. A murky dead pond, apparently devoid of life

Some coats of Acrylic Gloss Varnish would make these perfectly acceptable winter ponds for a dry terrain but I wanted ice. Moreover, I wanted to be able to reuse the ponds for more normal games so the ice could not be permanent. I acquired a small quantity of  candy art studio ice weathering powder and sprinkled this in an irregular way over my (dry) pond surface. I blew it a little to spread it more evenly. And I was happy with that till I would apply the "snow".

You can see it has a blue tinge in the jar, which is ideal for that cold feel

The rest

I had to put a formal garden in front of the manor but I needed to keep it simple for winter. No historic template for the 1745 garden was available which freed me to just give a usable impression. I delved into my stock of preloved home-made terrain and had lots more  kitchen garden plots (originally from Hougoumont in 2015), made from carpet offcuts. I covered the joins to make a  kind of gridded pathway (ignoring the conjectured design I had put in my map in March). this was from a roll of canvas type wall covering picked up in a DIY store sale many years ago.

Then coloured and freshened up with paint and some conventional hedge pieces glued as a boundary.

But those bright green cheerful hedgerows needed a totally different look for Winter. So I got out the Hob-e-Tac glue, which is ideal for flexible foliage, and coated the upper surfaces to receive a liberal dose of a brown scatter mix to represent either winter leaves or just a mass of bare twigs.

 

You can see the brown at the lower end of the hedge above, and edging the garden plots by the village templates below (now given a basic sandy topping).

So at this stage I was very pleased but looking forward to the final effect - a bit like varnishing a painting - scattering the snow powders. 

So you can see what I used in the above photos. For certain areas I preferred to sieve it to get fine powder and over large areas scatter freehand from the bag. I was aiming to give a melting and drifting effect - a cold feel without the need to hinder movement in the game. And I wanted to recover it all after the game, so no wet glue or paint.  Here is where I went for my supplies - other companies are available of course.   wwscenics snow effects

Ready for the armies

So all that remains is to give you a tour of the finished battlefield at the crack of dawn 26th December 1745.

Althorp Manor and Stables

Harleston Village.
The ponds fitted in much better once the snow was scattered around to blend in the icy effect

View of the manor from the northern higher ground

View of Harleston from the Jacobite southern approach

The Hunting Lodge. Occupied on Christmas night by Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick and his staff, diplomatic guest of the Duke of Cumberland

Just for fun, and so you can judge the effect with 28mm figures - some of my RSM Hanoverians set out from their quarters

Above and below: Shots from the area of the Hunting Lodge have alerted the servants and grooms. Panic stations to evacuate Earl Spencer's vintage French wine collection  and to dismantle the Headquarters camp so the troops can deploy to face the Scots .

A few teaser photos: Ken, Guy and Richard fully occupied on Day One; Jacobites surge on Althorp Manor and Stables. Government resistance in front of Harleston village

I hope you may have found that useful or entertaining. The next part will feature Guy's narrative of the actual wargame and give links to downloads of all the background documents .....oh.. and dozens more photos!

Making trees; and more on the 18th century post lockdown games

 This post follows on directly from my previous Back to the 18th Century post lockdown and in it I'll be showing how I made the wintry trees for Brampton and then a bit more on the upcoming two SYW battles on this terrain, with a few pointers on my Summer/Autumn trees.

Wintry trees entertain Prussians and Austrians for a skirmish

On cardboard terrain boards

But first I wanted to correct any misunderstanding created by the previous post. My normal table has a flat slightly textured green surface and some games I just "add-on" terrain features as most wargamers do. However, when I have more time or something special coming up I like to sculpt a terrain specially and after a few games generally just cut it up and reuse what I can and dump the rest. Morally I don't like putting this stuff into landfill but it's only once or twice a year at most. Like everyone I have limited storage space and my garage is pretty full since the Waterloo terrains of 2015! So this, and all my papier mache surfaces, has wrinkles where the paper dries in an irregular way. I don't care about that and try to use it by dry brushing or partially covering with scatter. I don't recommend this for your permanent table if you require flat surfaces on which to rest your hills, buildings and woods etc. unless you are prepared to work at it quite a bit and add texture to even things up.  But I'm just a bit mad as 55 years of wargaming has made me rather dissatisfied with ordinary, or too much temporary looking, terrain, sorry.

On to the Winter Trees

I'll start with giving a link that I originally showed on my blog in 2015, which is for Supertrees. This is a natural product from the USA and takes all the hard work out of making armatures for natural looking trees. Removing the hard work means its quicker to do mass woods and forests and some may recall I showed how I made about 150 for our Cotswold Waterloos back then here, But as always the pictures tell it better than mere words

First I cut lots of bases from hardboard or old canvas board from my painting. Then I passed through a strong map pin for each tree trunk. These were secured with glue. My "working area" is a big piece of polystyrene covered with paper (the same ones I used in 2015 in fact) so the pinned structures are held firm during the process

The pins are not essential but for me it means I can push them into my cardboard and plaster terrain for a secure fit which can easily be moved deliberately (but harder by accident) during the game to facilitate figures; and they also give a fixing place for the trunk

Here I've used a glue gun to fasten a sprig of natural "Supertree" to each pin. The dense nature of gun glue helps disguise the pin profile and you can be artistic with it too if you wish! Also it dries quickly which is a great help

Above and below; Small sprigs of Supertree waste bits
 are stuck over the pins which will look like ground level growth

Although you could keep them natural and move on to the bases I feel they need strengthening and painting. This was done by making up a bowl of PVA glue, dark brown acrylic paint, and water, well stirred together. It's a messy job - I suggest you use rubber gloves and have a plastic or paper sheet. The pin and poly work surface enabled me to dip them throughly and then hang them upside down to drip till the mixture dried (a couple of hours in warm air outdoors).

When dry they can be spray painted with various shades of compatible wintry tones of grey/brown cream/off white, whatever your taste.

When the trunks, branches and twiggy bits are dry it's time to deal with bases. I used PVA with a brown acrylic paint mixture and then sprinkled scatter while very wet 

I used a mixture of commercial dead leaf, or "forest floor" scatter and sawdust of different sizes with the occasional twiggy bits for variety

And here are some pressed in situ on my sculpted board in one of the spots I had prepared (see previous post) by the marshy beck

Above and below: Just for a photo opportunity I pushed some into a hill on the table and arranged the
light troops skirmishing to give a better idea of scale.  Freikorps by Foundry Miniatures from my collection; Grenzers are Front Rank I believe formerly in Phil Olley's collection and originally painted by John Preece I'm told.

Battle of the River Mur

Now for the second battle. After Guy had approved my original plan for the Brampton table Ken knew the limitations of hills, rivers and some roads for his game as we wanted to have the minimum of work to do to make an overnight change of scene. He came up with a lovely sketch which I turned into a Photoshop version based on the actual table and then we negotiated over the correct footprint sizes of BUAs etc . I was able to choose some appropriate buildings from my collection and this is a top-down photo map and a couple of photos of the table so you can see it ready.  Whether it is an Imagi-nations or historical game I have yet to find out, Ken is full of surprises...........

Photo map for Battle of the River Mur

Town of Stadl an der Mur in the foreground

Polsbach bridge and St Georgen are the nearest points of interest in this view

Making the Summer trees

To be fair I did not "make" these. I found some time ago that you can now buy on Ebay really respectable looking trees for model railways from China. They come in packs of different sizes and this size seems to be 50p to a pound or so each tree. The only trouble is they are rather garish green and don't have bases as I presume they are intended to be glued in permanent spots on a railway layout. So for my purposes I have to put them on single and multiple bases and make the leaves look nicer. 

The original colour green with grey-brown plastic trunks

I gouged a hole large enough in my hardboard bases and stuck them
 in initially with UHU glue and then later with glue gun to make them
 firm and blend in the trunk shape to the ground

Time now to use whatever commercial leaf style scatter or small tree/bush foliage you like. I used Woodland Scenics "scenic glue"  this time as it has a tackiness that holds most of the foliage in place till it is dry. PVA is not very advisable as it is prone to drip with gravity

I often mix my own blends and here i have literally thrown on some of the lighter yellow/orange tones on top to get random colour effects. 
I call on my art training and remember the theories of Georges Seurat and the Pointilist School - that if you put enough different tiny points of colour together you can create a whole different effect from standard viewing range. So they look better at a distance.

This photo shows the bases covered in my usual gunge of household powder filler, PVA, water, acrylic paint and some sand, grit or sawdust for body texture.

Here is a view of the batch with bases drying.
The different shades of green show up now

Close up pointillism, sorry about the blur! Cool tree photography or just ineptitude with flash
- you decide!

The bases are being textured now with whatever leave and foliage blends you like  stuck down with PVA glue.  Good to leave some of the "earth" showing  and dry brush it (and the tree trunks) with cream highlight. I also added bunches of thicker model foliage as bushes.

Now outside to dry off and then a generous coat of matt spray varnish to keep everything in place

Here are some of them in place on the table

And on parade with some of my RSM95 Hanoverians

The small trees in the middle distance are some of the original ones from Waterloo 2015

Must let some Crann Tara (generic) French try marching past them too.....

The Battle of the Auden Hills

I hope you've enjoyed this post so far but I haven't told you everything yet. Coincidentally while progressing this journey to two really longed-for 18th century games with old mates I came across, by accident on the Wild Geese Wargamers forum, a certain Paul B. of Cheltenham. I couldn't resist getting in touch as my 55 years as a Cheltenham resident up to 2013 made me curious why we had not met before.  Paul B turned out to be a long term wargamer of non competitive bent like me and with very varied tastes in military history and wargaming. We invited him along to Ken's River Mur game as he is keen to try out Honours of War and we are well familiar with them by now and equally keen to proselytise.

But better yet Paul possesses a couple of truly beautiful Austrian and Prussian SYW armies of Minden and Crann Tara Miniatures, and like us, is familiar with the super generous owners of those companies, Jim Purky and Graham Cummings. It was not difficult for me to invite him to try out HoW with his troops on yet another adaptation of the "Brampton" basic terrain. So I'm organising "The Battle of the Auden Hills" in mid June and I've invited some veterans of Battles here at Oakridge, Gloucestershire - Kevin East, Dillon Browne and Martin Gane, to join us.

Here is a Photoshop map version of the battlefield I have planned for us

Can't say much about it in public but, inspired by using Paul's armies I have set this loosely just before the battle of Torgau in early November 1760 and tried to come up with a scenario which will encourage both sides to be bold and we'll be using around 1000 figures in all.

I will leave you with some 18th Century eye candy - some photos taken when Paul brought his Austrian army for a little try out on my table last week.

As ever all comments or questions gratefully received and thank you to those who so graciously commented on the previous part of this double post.