Building a Bronze Age Courtyard House

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

I planned to build a Bronze Age courtyard complex that could be used as a townhouse inside city walls or as a walled farmhouse out in the rolling countryside. The idea would be to have three buildings around a central courtyard with a containing wall. I wanted the model to have a pretty small footprint and I thought that fitting it on a 200mm-square base was about as small as I could go.

First up, the base. After deciding on the size of the buildings, I made sure that slots were cut for them. This would help with positioning and fixing the buildings but also positioning the courtyard’s paving slabs and a pivot hole for the front gate.



I made a start with the building that would serve as the work area of the complex – let’s call it the workshop. I positioned the windows high on the walls – a practical solution to allow air to circulate. It’s a simple building – nothing fancy. Perhaps it was used for some kind of industry, or animals were kept in it. Slaves could have been housed here but there would have been other places to kip, too. More of that later.



This is one of those builds that might be easier to paint from the inside-out. So I made the most of my start and textured and painted the first building before anymore building got in the way. I textured with acrylic paste on the woodwork and baking soda on the rest, as usual.



Next up, I attached three walls of what would be a small kitchen building. The important feature of this building would be the fire with a smoke-hole in the roof. I added a ring of slabs for an open fire on the floor. This would have been a common type of fireplace in the Bronze Age. Cooking was still done over an open fire on the floor in the round houses of the later Iron Age.



I decided to keep the doorway simple and without a door. Because the room would be visible from outside, I added a pile of kindling against the wall that could be seen through the doorway. I put some grit and grout in the fireplace to be painted as embers and splashed some grout around the walls to create a bit of rough wall surface for this work room. I placed a piece of card on the floor as an wooden eating board beside the fire. While the grout inside was drying, I added some texture to the outside of the walls.



I painted up what I had modelled so far, concentrating really on what might become harder to paint later as I built around the courtyard.

[Sinewgrab]

Do you mix the soda with paint, or with an adhesive first?  I like the texture you end up with.

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

Thanks!

I just brush on neat white glue on individual stones and over the walls, then dust over with the powder and shake off the excess.

http://projects.supremelittleness.co.uk/?p=1077

If you mix the powder with glue (or paint) it forms more of a solid object that can be used to fill cracks if you like or spread on in lumps as people do to create snow effects.

[Sinewgrab]

Excellent.  Thank you.

[Hu Rhu]

That looks amazing.     I shall be following with interest.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

This is really good. I shall follow with interest.

[Irregular Wars Nic]

Yes, this is splendid. I hope the BA buildings will be available as kits through 4Ground in due course?

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

Thanks for the comments so far!

Yes, this is splendid. I hope the BA buildings will be available as kits through 4Ground in due course?

It’s like the building phases of the actual Troy! First phase, I’m sharing the building of my own Troy. What happens next is up for grabs. Everyone is welcome to leave comments on my blog to let me know what you think.

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

On with the build of the courtyard house!



I glued the kitchen’s other wall in place and then concentrated on the courtyard area. I added some texture, using baking soda again for the slabs but using chinchilla dust for the ground between the slabs. Chinchilla dust is a clay powder designed as a dust bath for chinchillas. It actually uses the same clay used to produce white clay tobacco pipes. Like baking soda, it’s pretty good at absorbing moisture – whether you want it to or not. I added some paving slabs along the outside wall, cut from cereal packets, then added some texture.

I designed a simple door for the workshop and textured it with acrylic paste. I painted the door, the lintel and the doorstep before assembly. As this is a working door, it’s easier to paint before rather than after assembly. I included just enough doorstep to be seen from outside without modelling too much of the floor. The workshop like the other buildings would have a lift-off roof but I didn’t plan to model the interior of this building as I had the kitchen with its open doorway.



I designed the front gate as a working door, too. I textured and painted the door before assembly as it would be fixed in place once the wall was glued to the base. It’s important not to texture the slabs and ground beneath these working doors as the extra thickness might jam the door. Sometimes a layer of thick paint is enough to cause a jam!



The wall, although small, closes in the courtyard, providing privacy and security. I thought of adding a bolt or bar at the back of the gate but then thought of simply having a slave sleep against the door every night. With a dog, perhaps. There’s a good chance that’s what would have happened, anyway. (Any figures available?)

I lightly filed away the sharp edges of the fibreboard piece designed as the top of the wall. This is very easy to do with a nail file. It’s a quick and simple way of giving the smoothed-off mud-brick more of a natural rounded look. I gave the top a wash of grout filler, as well.

[Patrice]

  Very good! ...and inspiring.

[Askellad]

  Love it! Did you ever thinking of saling this?! I have seen your Troy project on your blog, I am in love

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

Many thanks!

Askellad: Perhaps a kickstarter is on the horizon? Meanwhile, I'll do my best to encourage the romance!

[Askellad]

I have share your work on my bronze age wargaming group on FB.
Many likes!

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

Many thanks!

The Bronze Age is such as fascinating period, both archaeologically and for gaming.

I welcome comments on my blog, especially from like-minded Bronze Age enthusiasts.

[SupremeLittlenessDesigns]

Next up, I needed an actual courtyard house.



I wanted to have a building with upstairs living quarters. This is where the main household would have lived and slept. With not much space left on the base, the building would have to have a small footprint but I didn’t use all the available space as I didn’t want the building looking too long and narrow. I gave the upstairs windows double shutters.

The private courtyard would have been an excellent place to grow food – safe from the casual picking of passersby. I used contact adhesive to attach some garden twigs to the wall as some sort of climbing plant. I glued on a piece of Woodland Scenics green ‘poly fiber’ as the basis of the foliage. I dribbled on Woodland Scenics scenic cement then sprinkled over with scenic leaf litter in various shades. I finished by giving the foliage a fixing spray of diluted white glue.



At this point I thought I might experiment with keeping this model separate – in effect, lift off. There was no real reason for doing this. However, it would certainly allow perfect access to the courtyard, which otherwise would be a tight gaming area. But it would leave me with the job of disguising the meeting point between the building and the ground, which is not as easy to do as it is when a model is fixed to a base. Although I didn’t glue down the building (not for now, anyway) I did glue the building’s doorstep to the base – and was therefore able to texture around it. This left the door free of being permanently fixed in place (for now) – something I might appreciate later.

I used a colourful tuft – glued to the base where the climbing plant would stand – to hide the end of the twigs. I finished texturing the courtyard up to the wall, making sure that no grit went where the wall would stand.



With the three buildings made, I was now left with two spaces at one end of the base.



I decided to fill one vacant plot with a building extension. This would be a simple timber-framed mud-brick lean-to. The build would cover over some of the stonework designs designed specially for the walls but that didn’t matter at all. I tore a piece off the lean-to’s cardboard cladding then did some quick sculpting of mud bricks (over-sized to suit the design) with a cocktail stick/toothpick.



For the other space, I made an impromptu tree model with a garden-twig tree trunk. I stuck a pin in each end of the twig. One pin would secure the model to the base. The other would provide stability to the green foam that I used to create the foliage. I used a spray of diluted white glue both as adhesive for some leaf scatter and as a fixative. Trees would no doubt be encouraged in towns to provide shade but would make the building look even more in place in a country setting.