'Accidental' Dark Age/Early Medieval Village

[Astor]

(Putting this here rather than Medieval Adventures as it's still very much a WIP)

I haven't had the luxury of a lot of hobby time over the last few years whilst completing my OU degree (finishes next week!), or have started projects only to abandon them pretty quickly, but this seems to have stuck...

Quick background - I was sorting through my hobby boxes and found an unpainted Anglo-Dane warband that I must have bought ages ago when my then-local group was getting into SAGA, but unfortunately most of their weapons were missing or broken. They'd languished in a box long enough, and with replacement weapons ordered, I didn't want to lose enthusiasm while I waited for the postman to arrive, so started looking for some simple builds - it's only in the last year or so that I've come around to the idea of making my own terrain - I could buy MDF, but I'd only end up modifying them.

I'd come across a YouTube video about making wattle fences using toothpicks and garden twist tie, and decided it looked easy enough, and in the last two weeks it's kind of spiralled from making some fields into a little bit more...

Some fields to try out some DIY wattle-ing:



Of course, fields need people to tend them, and they need somewhere to live/work...



Some 'grub huts' / workshops. The one on the left was the first I built - I'm not entirely happy with the beams/size of the door, but I'm sure it'll look alright on the table. For the smaller one, I used a leather edge bevelling tool to chamfer the edges of the planks and beams to rough them up a bit - hurrah for dual purpose tools! I then thought I'd try a house or two -



I've never made a building like this before - laying the 'timber' was quite fun. I'm not entirely happy with the scale of the door - I think I could have made it smaller, so it may end up being used as a hall of some kind instead of a house. Currently thinking about what to use to fill the panels - maybe grout/all-purpose filler of some sort?

While making the roofs I learned a valuable lesson about keeping all of my craft materials in the same place - it was only after I'd struggled to make the roofs for the workshops (generously provided by St. Alfredo of Lidl, patron saint of cheap Pizza), that I remembered I had some blank greeting cards that would be perfectly symmetrical - I'll be remembering those in future!



My preferred thatch has been towelling for a while - I made a 'shed' last year for The Silver Bayonet that I was quite happy with, so decided to follow the same process, although the donor towel this time is a little fluffier, making for a nice, thick roof (which thankfully hides the gaps between the building and the roof!)



The larger building still needs covering, and the roofs will get brush/coat of watered down PVA, but the 'village' so far -



I'm still figuring out what shape/size bases the buildings will get, but I've already drawn out shapes for a few more buildings including a grain store, more houses, animal enclosure, and possibly a church, but I think I'll finish these first! 

[Aethelwulf]

Your village looks great! I'm going to have to make a fence like that.

[snitcythedog]

This is how it starts.  You find a few models in your bin of shame and decide to do them.  Then somehow you end up with fifteen boxes of terrain, eight rule sets and five armies.  I don't have a problem either.  

Wonderful builds so far.  Can't wait to see them done. 

[Bloggard]

great stuff.

[Codsticker]

Excellent work- I look forward to seeing them painted.

[Daeothar]

That's some cracking scratchbuilding! 

I especially like the chamfered edges on the beams on the small hut; I was recently in a reconstructed viking village in Denmark and most of the plain wooden constructions looked exactly like that!

The fences are inspired too, and I also like your use of corrugated cardboard for the field.

Can't wait to see the final result!