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It's a mini me |
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Mini me and banner man sans banner |
I bid thee all a fond farewell and to tune in next time for another ramble from the Angry History Chef(retired)
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It's a mini me |
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Mini me and banner man sans banner |
Why? I hear you cry or maybe not given I doubt people read this but if they do thanks. Anyway today is painting day for the Burgh. The board is covered in sand for texture and I've selected my colours for the painting project. Now as well as sandstone cliffs nottingham is also based on a very heavy clay bed for its soil, heavy enough in fact that if you want anything more than a lawn in your back garden your going to need to either know you plants or be prepared for a lot of heavy digging but before i go off on a tangent about gardening in this fair and beautiful shit hole I call home I will come back to paint and picking colours to use on the board.
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Almost there just got to order the last buildings for the Anglo Saxon Burgh and add the small detail. |
Greetings to my fellow history nuts and war gamer fanatics and hey to the normal folks.
So today I've thought I would talk about Nottingham in the Anglo-Saxon period. The town was founded around the turn of the 6th to 7th century, whether this was an actual new settlement started or just a land grab of an existing settlement that was already here since the Romans I could not say. However what we do know is that the leading noble who started/grabbed this place is called Snot and that Snotingaham would last as a name until at least the end of the 11th century. This first settlement of Nottingham is today what is referred to as the lace market and its church St. Mary's is still there.The town would change little until 868 when the great heathen army rocked up and captured the place. 20 years later it would be signed over as one of the five boroughs that would go to make up the area referred to as the Danelaw and this Danelaw region would be enshrined in English laws up until the Norman conquests.
The town during this viking settlement period would expand further north but the walls of the original burgh would not be expanded to encompass it. I personally believe that this that the outer expansion from the original site was of small farmsteads that then fled to the fortifications of the original town in times of trouble.
The defences of the town where of considerable strength according to Norman chroniclers consisting of a very deep ditch and well built wooden palisades built on a high earthen rampart. This of course disappears in 1068 when the first of Nottingham castle is built on a neighbouring rocky outcrop that also overlooked the lean and was even higher than the original town.
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The Shield wall of the Danelaw Reenactment group with other viking Society members at Whitby Abbey representing part of the great Heathen Army |
I've build the cliffs up on one side and sloped the board away from them because I have neither time nor resources to try and build a topographical board that matches the land exactly to its rises and falls.
The whole premise is to have a board that resembles Nottingham roughly in the medival period. Hence why St.Mary's church, the oldest in the city, sits on the cliff and overlooks the rest of the Saxon burgh, so is thus placed on the highest point on the board.
I've also marked out and placed the houses and walk ways of the burgh and plastered the foam cliffs to blend them in the lower edge of the board, once it's all dry I will cover it in sand to texture it and then on to part 3 the painting.
So first off loyal fans I've started with the oldest part of Nottingham, the Anglo Saxon burgh. It shall not include its walls due to the fact that I'm building this table for mostly 12th to 15th century games.
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The red line indicates roughly the area I've marked out on the paper plan |
However do not despair noble followers for as the table will be modular if I ever have need of the burgh purely by its self for game set during the 6th to 11th century I will have some palisades made up to encircle it.
Now the burgh and the later expanded settlement is based with one side edging a cliff of sand stone that over looks the Trent valley with the river lean below it (the modern lean is now a canal that feeds in to the Trent but originally it was a large tributary of the Trent) and the other end spreading away towards the north into futile pastures and farm land.
This original town when over laid on the modern city is a truly tiny area that can be crossed in about a 10 to 15 minutes walk, in fact you could likely walk the circumference of the original burh in about 30 minutes with out much
trouble.
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This rough plan is the basic out line of streets and areas where eventually i will have build up into a small urban settlement. |
Yeah the something else I think. So we start 2021 with a new spring in our step and I have decided to build Nottingham as it was during the medieval period. (As it's for wargaming I've been a lot looser on the authentic front but I shall explain.
So the planned project is to construct a series of modular boards that when combined will represent the wonderful shit hole of fair Nottingham.( I'm allowed to call it a shit hole I live hear the rest of you can bog off)
Any way back to the plan that when finished will sit nicely at a whopping 9 feet by 4 feet or for you non imperial measurements users about 2.9m by 1.2m
Greetings to my fellow history nuts and wargaming fanatics friends,and hi to all the normal folks who seem to have wandered in off the street.
Now as the title says and many of you may be wondering why am I angry and where does history come into it. So let us begin with a short intro in to the madness that is my life.My name is Kieran Kirkham I'm an ex chef (hence the angry but only in a small part real reason see below & retired part), I've spent 24 years war gaming and 18 years mucking about with weapons and studying history because I'm a reenactor and for my shame also an authenticity officer.
If dear reader you know what an authenticity officer is then you have alas reached the end of this blog with concern to important info, if you don't however please see below.
An authenticity officer is some one who is a member of a reenactment group who researches the clothing, equipment, crafts, food and social aspects of the period the group covers.
They're often a maligned part of reenactment world because their job is to ensure accuracy within groups so that the general public don't have the bullshit Hollywood version of history reinforced and instead actually gain knowledge of the period that they see. Of course this is often a thankless task which we do any way because people love to puni......I mean strive for greater knowledge.
Now it is fight against inaccuracies and spreading of the Hollywood trope of things like knights, vikings and other historical types that truly gives the anger to my title much to the point my wife worries that one day history will quite literally kill me.
Fair thee well folks and may your lives be calm and full of cake and tea.
Kieran.
So noble readers (or reader more likely) the great nottingham build project for the baron wars is going to have to go on hold for now due to...