The Magnetic Dog

Smallest painting job I've ever done. Finally got hold of a casting to provide Prince Rupert's famous poodle, Boye. After failing dismally to get an HO model railway dog (and I looked at all sorts of upmarket stuff like Preiser and Faller), and being unable to find anything suitable in an overscale range (I drew the line some distance short of investing in a complete 28mm Warlord Games Rupert c/w Boye), I surprised myself by getting, very cheaply and simply, a 15mm dog from Peter Pig to accompany my 20mm prince.

Here he is, then. Rupert won't notice that the dog is underscale, since Rupert almost certainly lives in a 15mm scale house in my version of Civil War England. Since Rupert may not always want to have his dog with him, and - more seriously - since the Rupert figure will frequently be required to represent some other dude who did not have a dog, I have attached steel paper to the general's base and some magnetic sheet to the poodle, and the pooch is detachable (I am opening a book on how long it is before I lose him). The Rupert figure, by the way, is a Tumbling Dice rider on an SHQ horse, the rather idiosyncratic, house standard recipe, very kindly painted for me a little while ago by the mighty Albannach.

In passing, if you wish to see the full, evil glory of Google, try searching for a 15mm miniature poodle.

Right - now to try to get a 20mm ferret for Lord John Byron...

***** Late Edit *****

Following the comment from M. Le Balai Joyeux, below, I dug out the sad cartoon of Boye's demise - he does look a bit black, doesn't he? However, I also append a painting of the same fellow which is attributed to Rupert's sister - who would know, you would think - which must be a vote for a pale colour. Hmmm.

French Siege Train: More Gunners

Thanks for positive reaction to the painted SHQ siege artillerymen from last week. I quite enjoyed the "factory" process of painting up the first lot of gunners for the Siege Train, so was happy to bash on ahead this week and get the rest of them done. It went well enough (though my current favourite brush seems to be moulting), and I got them finished quite quickly.

Two batteries of howitzers and two of Gribeauval mortars, to add to the siege cannons

I have to confess to a faint unease about this little project - I'm happy to have made such good progress (eventually), but there is something about it which maybe says something about me which I don't really care for. Online, one sees all sorts of projects which are beautiful, or which make use of rare and glorious figures, or which represent the height of the figure-painter's art for us to relish. This is none of these things - it is just BIG. Having decided to do it, I have gone about it (relentlessly?) and got it finished - it's kind of industrial. Never mind - I guess it's a personal style or something.

All right then - let's have a look at what's in this box now...

...all right, that's the whole lot

That's the guns ready for the French siege train, then - I may paint a couple of water buckets or ammo chests to make the bases more interesting, and I have some officers and some digging soldiers to paint - all looking quite promising. Another major gap in the Napoleonic siege effort is I still have to obtain some of the special MDF buttresses to enable guns to stand on my Vauban walls - it's in hand - the drawings exist, I just have to meet Michael from Supreme Littleness for a coffee next week and we are back on track.

Good. I'll tidy the brushes away until after Christmas.

Separate Topic - more pottery buildings.

I have obtained a couple more buildings for my ECW town...

On the right, The Priory, Lavenham, on the left a rather odd church...

...it's flat-backed! What in model railway circles I believe we used to call
low relief - this is a church to stick in the distance, against the edge of the table. 

French Siege Train: A Little Progress

The guns were painted up months ago, but recent diversions in the Real Life Dept have meant that the siege train has been stuck in a siding for a while.

You wish to lose a wall? a bastion, perhaps? These are the boys for you

The first batch of gunners are now painted and ready - I'm pleased with them. As ever, they are finished in my simple old toy soldier style, and the unpretentious little SHQ/Kennington crewmen are absolutely fine for purpose. These are the 3 batteries of 24pdr siege guns (old La Vallière pattern models, as is historically accurate for the French in Spain, though the purist might object to the rather later style of jacket...). The crews for the mortars and howitzers are undercoated and on the bottletops, so they should follow shortly.

The siege train also merits some senior officers to go with it, so I'll see what I can come up with.

Jean-Marie ponders - dolphins? why dolphins?

French Siege Train - Ramrod Enhancement

Ramrod salesmen really don't want you to know about this neat trick.
Kennington gunners in 1813 uniforms, all ready for sieges in 1810 - no wonder they are smiling.

I do have some OOP NapoleoN gunners available, but, since I need big numbers, and since the Siege Train is probably going to spend the vast majority of its time in its box, I am intending to man my French siege equipment with cheap and cheerful (and underrated, in my opinion) SHQ/Kennington crews.

I've still got one small shipment to come, but most of the figures are here, and I've cleaned them up and put them on the regulation bottletops, ready for painting. I also took the opportunity to carry out some modest conversion work, equipping half a dozen of the gunners with ramrods of a suitable size for the 24pdr behemoths.

My photo includes an unadjusted specimen, front centre, for comparison. A razor saw, a pack of needle files, a pin vice and some (accelerated!) superglue and I am a happy chappie - no doubt about it!


Separate Topic

Since today is the 204th anniversary of the Battle of Salamanca (that's Los Arapiles to you European fellows), I am feeling rash enough to do something naughty...

I'm not supposed to show anyone these, but here's a "leak" of some photos of the masters of some new Portuguese Cacadores I have commissioned (in 1/72 white metal) from Hagen Miniatures. In due course they will appear for sale on Hagen's website, but I thought I'd sneak in a quick appetiser. These are to be marketed under the Foy Figures name, to join the Portuguese Line infantry and 1809 Spanish line cavalry which are already on sale from Hagen. The website is here.

Special message to Armand (Tango01) - please do me a favour, and don't link this to TMP...

Still in the Spares Box, with Mike and Whiskers

Whiskers developing his technique - in fact, I imagine Whiskers as rather more bald than this

Almost exactly two years ago, I scored one of my biggest-ever hauls on eBay, and bought in a load of ECW figures which came from the estate of a chap in Northern Ireland who had recently died - his entire collection, which was enormous, was sold by a local charity shop. I only bought a stack of his ECW troops - all SHQ and Tumbling Dice 20mm - but there were literally hundreds of them.

The big surprise at the time was that they had very obviously been painted up and organised to fight Montrose's campaigns - since that was exactly what I wanted them for, I had seen that there were a lot of Scottish troop types in the collection, but it wasn't until I started checking out the flags that I realised what I had.

The figures were quite nicely painted, in a very plain style, but I was a bit shocked to see that they had been heavily coated with some kind of ship's varnish - these figures were definitely intended to stand up to some severe, industrial handling, I would say. I set about identifying figures which would restore most easily, and which were of most immediate use for my Montrose project, and I did some retouching, and a great deal of applying matt varnish to tone down the finish, and rebasing, and I was pleased with the results. The episode generated a lot of very plain, rather dull Scottish and Irish soldiers, which provided a fine addition to bulk up the splendid Covenanter units which Lee Gramson had already painted up for me.

All good - I've done some Montrose things now, and intend to revisit this again soon. While I was spending a few late nights in 2014, getting these ex-eBay fellows ready for the armies, I got to know the previous owner a bit better. Of course, I have no idea who he was, but at 1 a.m. when I was preparing figures for the prescribed matt varnish I would find myself chatting to him - I called him Mike, in the absence of other suggestions.

"Well, Mike," I would say, "this one's got cat hairs stuck on the varnish as well - you should keep old Whiskers out of the painting room.." and so on. I developed a technique of loosening the cat hairs from the varnish with the tip of a penknife, and then removing them with tweezers. A strange way to spend a long evening - this is almost certainly why I started talking to Mike. As time went on, it became a house joke that I had gradually changed my mind, and that I now believed that Whiskers had done the varnishing himself - perhaps with a little guidance from Mike.

Well the horses are pretty ghastly, but they should paint up simply enough, and that
gives me the better part of two new regiments of rather understated Northern horse

Since I've recently been rooting around in the Spares Box, I found another load of the ex Mike & Whiskers ECW boys, and I realised that there are a lot more in the heap which would usefully restore in the same way. So for a couple of evenings I've been washing and debasing and removing the cat hairs. Since these figures are probably a bit worse than the ones I selected for refurbing last time, there are a lot more cat hairs - in fact I have now begun to believe that Mike did the varnishing, but that he applied the varnish with Whiskers, rather than a brush.

And oodles more artillerymen - just the job for the sieges - more than enough...

It's going OK - we are now ready for a bit of touch-up, and then the matt varnish can start. I need to paint up a few extra cavalry figures from scratch, to make up the numbers, but I hope to get a couple of additional Scottish/Northern units of horse out of this, and I will have more gunners than I will ever possibly need - certainly I will have plenty to man the forthcoming extra artillery for siege games.

Topic #2 - more pottery ornaments ready for sieges...

I previously gave a glimpse of some of my new Tey Pottery houses - this little side-project is shaping up very nicely, and I have the makings of a presentable 17th Century English town centre, such as I can lay siege to. So here's a slightly bigger glimpse...

Refurbing again - French Line Chasseurs à Cheval

I've stated here, quite recently, that refurbing old, bought-in, pre-painted figures is mostly more grief than it is worth - unless, of course, there is some particular reason to go down that path. The results are rarely as good as I had hoped, the amount of labour is invariably far more than expected, and so on.

Well, I've been doing some more, despite all the lofty theory. 20mm French line Chasseurs are a rare find - apart from Hinton Hunt and Qualiticast (neither of which is around in sufficient quantities to keep prices down), the best traditional stand-by is the early (20mm) Garrison casting, which can still be found on eBay, and can be very useful if the figures are in good nick. I can never get enough Chasseurs, so I have a quantity of the old Garrisons in my spares box, waiting to be smartened up to take their place in the line.

Today's restored unit is the 15eme Chasseurs. They are certainly not beautiful, but the troopers were passable when I first got them, and their previous history was prestigious enough for me to wish to keep them as is, with basic retouching of chips, new varnish and the official-issue bases and sabot. Sometimes, for reasons which are not clear even to me, it seems right to leave things alone if possible. I've even left the rather faded orange facings and the oversized Garrison swords. These fellows must have been first painted in the late 1960s, I reckon.

One problem, of course, is that Garrison did not do command figures, so my improvised officer and trumpeter are both modern Kennington line Chevauxlegers-Lanciers, with spare Garrison heads fitted, mounted on Garrison horses. The resulting conversions are a little shorter than their colleagues, but their hats match beautifully, so they must be the right size...

The 15eme (and the 14eme, who may or may not appear eventually) have been pencilled into my official Grand Plan OOB for some years, nagging away at me, since I have been aware that they have been sitting in the boxes waiting for a place in the painting queue. Well, they're finally done - quite satisfying, really. The flaky trumpeter in sky blue is correct, by the way.

Background Artillery Project - 5.5" Howitzers

The guns aren't really as blue as the flash makes them appear

I seem to be back to painting my own troops again, so I've been picking away at a few odd things in the queue. Here's a battery of British 5.5" howitzers, ready for the Peninsular siege train. Guns are Hinchliffe 20mm, and the crew are Kennington, who are smart and fit for purpose, and a better match with their NapoleoN colleagues than I expected.

The mud-brown bases for siege units seem a bit drab, but it seemed a good idea once, and it's become a siege-train standard, as has the 4-gunners-per-gun-plus-an-officer-for-the-battery and the reduced-footprint 45mm x 90mm bases. Tradition is everything...

Next up for the Background Artillery Project (BAP) are a British spare wheel cart and yet another British caisson, both with Lamming horses and drivers. Don't hold your breath.

ECW Generals

Rupert and Chums

A very pleasant feature of an otherwise fairly dismal week here was the arrival of a little packet of ECW generals, painted for me by Iain in return for my foisting off some old deadbeat cavalry onto him - an exchange out of which I feel I did rather well. Iain has long been one of my favourite brush-wielders, and he has done a lovely job on these - thank you, again, young sir. (Hope the house-move goes well.)

It is an established truism that, for 20mm ECW, you just can't get the staff these days, so these fellows are especially welcome. These are SHQ figures, though the left hand figure (who is Prince Rupert in his working gear) is actually a Tumbling Dice man, hacked around a bit, with a pistol from Old John's useful accessory pack (from his 20mm Nostalgic Revival range), and his horse, as usual with my armies, is an SHQ casting, to try to keep scale creep down.

Such is my crazed enthusiasm, I even bought a packet of HO white metal cats and dogs from a model railway supplier, but eventually went off the idea of commissioning a 20mm scale Boye to keep the Prince company on his adventures. Partly this was because it would restrict the scope for getting Rupert to act out the part of someone else when required, but mostly it was because the dogs were not really of suitable breeds, and it would be undignified for the King's nephew to be galloping across the battlefield with a Dachshund. For an instant, I did consider providing one of my ECW personalities with a cat...

So please say hello to Rupert and his chums (as once featured in the Daily Express), and we expect them to speak exclusively in rhyming couplets from this point on. 

In passing, last night I was reading my revised edition of Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Pike and Shot (as one does), when I suddenly received a shock which might have threatened to spill my cocoa if I had had any. I was reading Mr Featherstone's animated account of the Battle of Auldearn in 1645, when I was surprised to note that Montrose was opposed on this occasion by an English force under the command of Sir John Hurry. English? If there was one person I can think of who would have  reacted badly to any confusion over just who was English and who was not, it would be DFF, so this is a puzzle to me - I am not letting go of this one - and there can be no temporary mistyping here, since the army's Englishness is restated on a number of occasions in the narrative. The battle map shows clearly that this English force appears to have comprised the regiments and contingents of Lothian, Findlater,  Seaforth, Moray, Campbell of Lawers and some Highland levies, so what can he possibly mean? Does he mean that they were Protestants? That they were the national army of Scotland, who were allied to the army of the English Parliament? I would reject, out of hand, any suggestion that the writer had had a tiny lapse of memory, and had slipped a hundred years to the Jacobite Unpleasantness. My surprise is only heightened by the fact that this proxy English army at Auldearn, of course, was on the receiving end of - to use a noble Scots phrase - a good gubbing.

So - it is no matter at all, but I am intrigued. I am keen to get back to the book tonight to see if the French turn up at Cropredy Bridge.

Please note - any commenters will get no marks at all for mentioning the Referendum or any related matters. 

The Spaniards of 1809

This is all a bit of an about-face, since I have previously decided – and justified – that I would use an unexpected supply of bicorned Spanish infantry to provide units of Urban Militia to supplement my post-1811 army, rather than starting to tinker with adding battalions of white-uniformed chaps from 1809, however attractive they might be.

The decision was fairly easy, since I couldn’t possibly expect to collect enough figures to make a decent 1809 army, and since the earlier and later versions of the Spanish army don’t really mix very comfortably. Well, not for me.

Since then I have very quickly obtained a pile of figures – remainder stocks of NapoleoN and Falcata still existed, if you ferreted about a bit, and someone unloaded a stack of unpainted figures on eBay. Suddenly – to my considerable surprise – a proper 1809 army is a real possibility. Amazing what you can achieve when (because?) you are not really trying. OK – let’s be honest – they may not be much of a prospect for winning battles, but they should be beautiful. The white uniform introduced in 1805 is a great favourite of mine.

At present I have enough figures for some 18 battalions of line infantry, 4 of light, 4 of grenadiers, plus an adequate supply of generals, command figures and some very natty sappers. Some of my existing (post 1811) army will slot right in – particularly the light cavalry and the voluntarios in round hats. I am negotiating (haltingly) with a supplier in Spain for some 1809 artillery and cavalry, and am looking very seriously at the Kennington Spaniards – these last are just a tad small compared with the NapoleoN and Falcata boys, but self-contained units from a single manufacturer will be fine; Kennington do very nice artillery crews and line infantry. All sorts of possibilities are shaping up.

Thus far I’ve sent two 2-battalion regiments of infantry to be painted (Africa and Reina), but it now behoves me to sit down with the order of battle for the real Army of the Centre from early 1809 (which I have managed to correct and re-engineer by painstaking comparison of various sources) and plan exactly which bits of it will make up my new army.

The idea – to start with – will be to have infantry divisions each containing (typically) 2 x 2 battalion regiments of line (or guard), 2 or 3 battalions of lights, 2 battalions  of provinciales (dressed in white like the line, but all with red facings), 1 combined battalion of grenadiers and a foot battery. How many such divisions is possible or even sensible I have yet to decide – 3 might be a decent effort – I’d like 4, but that’s not feasible at present, so I’ll maybe go for a Vanguard Divn, a Reserve (with the guards in) and a Line Divn.

Having made some token show of top-down planning, I can now get back to the fun business of drooling over which uniforms I fancy! My sketch OOB includes 2 battalions of the Guarda Real, 1 of the Walloon Guards and 1 of the Regimiento Irlanda, this last in their sky blue with yellow facings, so that should all be a good colourful addition. The grenadier battalions will mostly be converged from the relevant companies of all the regiments in a division, so mixed facings will be the order of the day. I am contemplating the painting of the ornately embroidered bags on the grenadiers’ bearskins with a little alarm…

There’s no rush – I’ll just work away at building the army, and when they reach some kind of critical mass they can start doing some fighting. Pictures will appear here from time to time as parts are completed.

Cavalry is interesting – I have 2 regiments of light cavalry from my existing Spanish army who will be perfectly fine in the earlier period, and two regiments of irregular lancers, just right for Baylen. My friend Goyo is working to get me some cavalry figures which will work well as Line Cavalry (in blue) or dragoons (in yellow – I always wanted some yellow dragoons!).

Just a labour of love, really.

The Scales of Injustice? – figure sizes, yet again

This is going to get me dangerously close to obscure worlds such as railway modelling, of which I know nothing, and where I am likely to get slapped down mightily if I use the wrong terminology, or offend the international standards (whether they are universally obeyed or not).

I’ve always been puzzled by the mapping of modelling scales like 20mm, 25mm, 28mm, 40mm and so on against  the more intuitively scientific (and understandable) concepts like 1/72, 1/64, 1/300 and similar. I have moaned on about this at some length before, so will try not to waste too much time going over the same ground.

Basic problem is that figure manufacturers call visibly unequal figure scales by the same name. If we discount the possibility of different sized millimetres being in use simultaneously (although it might happen), the matter boils down to

(a) which bit of the man do you measure? – there are disciples of soles-to-scalp (i.e. how high is a figure), sole-to-eye (which sounds like a convention, but which generates a lot of passionate support – most of the lectures I get from the bearers of wisdom seem to follow this doctrine) and even bottom-of-base-to-eye (which just seems plain daft).

(b) (and this makes a bit of a nonsense of (a)) how tall is this man anyway?  

In response to a previous post, I was directed to this diagram from Jack Scruby, no less, which would appear to be authoritative unless you happen to disagree with it.

What has brought this to mind of late is that I have been involved in purchasing and studying some of the old Hinchliffe 20mm equipment range – the non-WW2 bits of which vanished without trace many years ago. It says on the packet that these are manufactured to a scale of 4mm to the foot, which is near enough 1/76 scale, which is the OO model railway scale. I’m not sure, but I think this scale is widely used for WW2 models. 4mm to the foot would make a 6-foot man 24mm tall, and a 5-foot man 20mm, so where does the “20mm” nomenclature come in?

As far as Hinchliffe are/were concerned, I also have some of their 25mm artillery range, and in there is an information sheet, which explains that their 25mm range uses a scale of 4.75mm to a foot (which I reckon is 1/64), and goes on to state that the human figures in this range are designed to represent men 5 foot 8 inches tall, which means that (assuming Hinchliffe’s manufacturing standards complied with their own house rules), those strange ectomorphic soldiers that turned the wargaming market upside down in the early 1970s must have been 27mm from sole to scalp. Does this mean 25mm to the eye? – whatever it means, this is the official lowdown on how Hinchliffe interpreted “25mm”, and we know for a fact that this is different from what Miniature Figurines and Les Higgins were doing. The information sheet I have, by the way, appears to date from September 1971 – I’m not sure if it is still the same sheet which goes out with the 25mm equipment today – this range, of course, is still in production.

OK – back to Hinchliffe’s 1/76 “20mm” men – assuming the same logic applied, a 5 foot 8 man would be around 22.5mm tall – which is consistent with Hinton Hunt and current Kennington figures – would he be 20mm to the eye? Could it be that the eye-measurers have been right all along?

I don’t buy many plastics – I’m not at all hostile to them, but I have grown accustomed to not buying them, to being concerned about paint-shedding, and discouraged by the proportion of useable wargame poses in a box, considering these are no longer the pocket-money option they once were. At this point someone may feel urged to miss the point of my post, and put me straight about the merits of plastics – please don’t bother – I’ll take your word for it. Honestly, I will.

The relevance of plastic figures here is that 1/72 is the universal standard – how well it is observed and how the manufacturers compare is not the point. No-one can argue about what 1/72 means in mathematical terms, and thus, over the years, I have got used to regarding my Napoleonic collection as being “approximately 1/72” – some  of my figures are described by the makers as 20mm (Hinton Hunt, Kennington, early Lammings, early Garrison, very early Minifigs), some of them are old 25mm (Higgins, Scruby, some S-Range), from before the world got bigger, and some of them are explicitly 1/72 (NapoleoN, Falcata and Art Miniaturen). My in-house rule is that if the hats match, they are the same size. Ideally, my chaps should be around 22-23mm tall (without headgear), though a taller man might be OK if his hat looks right!

25mm Soldiers, as purveyed by Hinchliffe (L) and Scruby

I have now confirmed that the much sought-after 1/76 Hinchliffe artillery are a tad underscale for plastic figures, while their 1/64 cousins are visibly too big. Confusingly, considering the precision which went into the research and sculpting, Hinton Hunt artillery appear to be even smaller than the Hinch 20s, so maybe there was an internal inconsistency there too.

I’ve always tended to avoid Newline 20mm figures – too small for me, though they are lovely – I have no idea what the official scale is, but I have it on good authority that some of their artillery pieces are a good fit with Hinton Hunt, for example, which is useful, but, again, a bit confusing. RSM and Irregular have an even smaller interpretation of 20mm, but at this point I am getting well outside my area of knowledge.

It looks as though my target Napoleonic recruit is somewhere in a ball park between 1/72 and 1/76, with guns and wagons to match. And the devil take the decimal places.

ECW - Recruitment continues...

Five new regiments of foot arrived back from Lee's House of Painting Miracles - once again, I am humbled by the quality. Thank you, Lee.

Three units of Lowland Covenanters, to help the Parliamentarian cause. These are the regiments of the Earl of Loudon (Glasgow), Colonel James Rae (Edinburgh) and Viscount Maitland (Midlothian), looking suitably belligerent. Shades of Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night. They will, of course, change their identity as appropriate to fit the scenario.

For the Royalists, there are two new units from the North of England, fighting with the Marquis of Newcastle's whitecoats; here are the regiments of Sir Wm Lambton and Colonel John Lamplugh. Like the Covenanters, these figures are mostly Tumbling Dice, with a few Kennington/SHQ chaps drafted in for a bit of variety. I really like these TD figures, but I have to say I'm getting very fed up with cleaning up and gluing heads, though the results appear worth the effort.

Lastly, here's a fine Puritan preacher, calling down appropriate vengeance (as one does). This is from the old Warrior range - not the present one - and is quite a rarity. I haven't quite decided how to use him yet, but here he is, practising, just in case.

More New Troops

A couple of units of town guards or militia - no muskets...

Yesterday the postie brought me a package of newly painted soldiers back from Lee - the customary lovely job. I've been busy getting them based and equipped with flags. With apologies for the poorly set-up pictures, here's a quick view of what's new before they disappear into the storage boxes.

A lot of Real World stuff going on at the moment, so the war-games have been a bit quiet.

More Royalist gallopers - this is Marcus Trevor's Regt

And a small unit of Firelocks for the Royalists - ready to capture Beeston

Different period - meanwhile, in the Peninsula, here is General Pablo Morillo.
The figure is a bit of a rarity from eBay - this is NapoleoN Miniatures'
Spanish general, which, as far as I knew, never made it into production.

More ECW Odd-Bods

I've been doing a little more painting - specifically last night, while not watching the Tottenham game. Just a few odd figures which have been waiting around and were beginning to irritate me.

Here's some young chaps proposing to take out Lady Derby's chimney pots once and for all...

...and here's a Royalist general of Foot, with his horse and a minder. The general himself is one of the original Warrior ECW range - definitely not the current ones. Some of these earlier figures are small enough to fit with my 20mm armies.

Bethell's Horse

Another new Parliamentarian regiment of Horse - this one is Colonel Hugh Bethell's Regiment. I painted these myself, so they are probably not up to the usual standard. Thanks to Lee for consultancy and spare pots of buff paint(!).

They don't have a flag yet - there are another 3 units of horse coming shortly, so they can all get their flags together. This is not just for time management purposes - it is so hard to get single-coated (i.e. coated on one side) lightweight, photo quality inkjet paper these days that I am now reduced to printing around the edges of old sheets bearing extra copies of Napoleonic flags I've done previously. Thus all at the same time will save paper as well. [Another useful environment-saving and penny-scrounging tip from MSF]

All I know about Bethell is that he came from Rise, in Yorkshire. The family home, Rise Hall, is still standing, though not in its 17th Century form, and is owned by Sarah Beeny - property developer and TV celeb. I read (with interest, naturally, since I am a great follower of celebs) that she and her husband found it a bit large for a weekend retreat (97 rooms), so they have had it smartened up and it is now available for wedding hire.

Rise Hall

How lovely. Please form an orderly queue.

I think I may have digressed a bit there.