Something I often wonder, is how the Britons would have viewed Roman engineering. The Britons could build some substantial structures themselves - as a visit to Maiden Castle near Dorchester will testify. But constructing buildings of more than one storey in stone must have come as a bit of a surprise, and as for fortifications like Hadrian’s Wall, well I imagine it could hardly have been more surprising if Little Green Men from Mars had turned up. It must have been quite awe-inspiring to folks used to little more than thatched roundhouses.
Anyway, this is hardly Hadrian’s Wall, but it is a little watchtower, or signal tower - perhaps reminiscent of those connecting outlying forts (such as Fanum Cocidi, or Bewcastle)with the Wall. I bought it from Grand Manner a few years ago, to use in my Games Workshop ‘Lord of the Rings’ games - the rounded arches were reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s take on Gondorian architecture. But it has spent a long time sitting, unpainted and unused, in one of my cupboards. I fished it out recently, and started on the job of cleaning it up and filling the holes. It has to be said that that stage took a lot of work - it wasn’t a great casting. But having done that, and squirted grey primer at it, I began to see that it could turn into a really nice model - and it has. I’m really quite happy with it.
I want to make some shutters for the windows, and then it should be complete. But before that, I have a little task to perform for Warlord Games - paint a group of their forthcoming Celtic archers,
Thursday, 28 May 2009
