Scenery Scales - Quick Sanity Check...

Different period, same problem - the troops look OK with buildings in a slightly
compressed vertical scale, but the greatly compressed horizontal scale means that
they are always crammed into far too little space. 

While I was constructing my representation of Newcastle, on Wednesday, I observed that the number of towers on the contemporary map is far higher than in my simplified model. Of course, I would expect this, but my attention was caught by a comment in one of my books - it refers to the medieval walls being built in accordance with "best practice of the pre-gunpowder age" - in particular, adjacent towers should be within bowshot of each other, to provide adequate cover.

This reminded me that I had previously run a ruler over my "15mm" Vauban defensive pieces (different period, same idea, similar logic) and been delighted to observe that the lengths of the bastion faces, the straight walls and all that matched up well with the official best-practice numbers out of Chris Duffy's Fire & Stone, which is most convenient, yet a little puzzling in view of the fact that my wargames, like most people's, are a mish-mash of different scales. In short, I'm pleased it works out, but by rights it probably shouldn't, so I had another think about it. There is something conceptually different about grouping representative clusters of buildings into a given area (the area is correct, but the number of houses is not) and placing a wall or a gate (the wall, or the gate - there was only one) in its correct place.

Let's see now - my soldiers are roughly 1/72 scale - what in a more innocent age we used to refer to as "true 25mm" (a phrase as smug as it was meaningless). To help a little with the look of the thing, I use 15mm scale buildings - 15mm is about 1/100 scale, which is the old TT model railway gauge, so the buildings are deliberately undersized compared with the men, but the distortion in the vertical scale is not too bad, and the saving in footprint size (and cost of the buildings!) more than compensates. As I've said before, a small cluster of small houses, to me, looks more convincingly like a village than a single 1/72 scale building. Whatever, I am comfortable with it, though it doesn't suit everyone.

When we speak of scale distortions, of course, all this fades into insignificance against the appalling liberties we take with horizontal distances. My ground scale - the one against which my Vauban bits and my medieval fortifications all fit tolerably well - is one 7-inch hex represents 200 paces. A bit of finger-in-the-air rounding gets us to something like 1/900 scale. So I use 1/72 men, 1/100 buildings and a 1/900 ground scale. Hmmm.

I was looking at the PaperTerrain website, and they offer pdf files of groundplan templates for (for example) a Vauban fort. Scaled appropriately to make the heights fit with 15mm, these templates are massive compared with my little fortification models. This is not a surprise, really, but it always takes me aback when I see it. It's OK - I understand it - the models of town walls and bastions and so on are not the sort of objects you "cluster" to represent a more numerous group. There was a wall, and there was a bastion, and they were here, and they are expected to fit the map and the tabletop - the matter of how many towers, of course, is not quite the same thing, but to get some version of the town of Newcastle to sit sensibly in a realistic footprint requires some cheating. The walls are the right height for 15mm (1/100 - which is not too unreasonable for 1/72 scale toy soldiers), but they are the right length for 1/900 - and yet it looks all right. I am forced to assume that, by luck or accident, the manufacturers have used the same numbers as I do, and their compromise works for me. If I used proper, proportional 1/900 scale walls then the soldiers would be in danger of tripping over them, and that really would be laughable.

So I've thought about it, yet again, and it works out all right - yet again. I knew it would, yet it is reassuring. I'll have to remember to check it all again in a few weeks. We all need all the reassurance we can get.

***************************

Late Edit, following Archduke Piccolo's comment:

This is an alternative map, an extract from a sketch plan prepared by Sir Jacob Astley in 1639. I have reproduced this by photographing it from Charles Sanford Terry's The Life and Campaigns of Alexander Leslie - a book which I have enjoyed immensely and which I was terrified I would wreck if I opened it wide enough to put it on the scanner! It shows the suburbs outside the Newgate and Pilgrim Street Gate, and also at Sandgate on the river, and gives a fascinating key to how it was proposed to place the artillery to defend the place. Note that Astley's 1000 foot scale is a bit different from the 200 pace scale shown in the William Mathew map I included in my previous post. I do not claim that one map is more accurate than the other - Mathew's is derived from John Speed's map, while Astley was the man who had to prepare Newcastle for defence against the Scots during the Bishop's War(s).

Not Quite the Siege of Newcastle 1644 - (1) Beginnings and Set Up

It will be a little while until the actual game takes place, but I've made a start on setting up an appropriate battlefield. Because of the short artillery ranges, the ground scale and the small size of 17th Century towns, I have decided to play the game across the table, which has a number of advantages.

My starting point is a contemporary map of Newcastle, dating from 1610 or so. Here it is.

By the time Lord Leven arrived at the gates in February 1644, a number of changes had taken place. The suburbs outside the northern section of the wall had been demolished (they burned for days, apparently), the walls had been put into a good state of repair (they had even been plastered, to make escalade more difficult - my walls have not been plastered...), but were still old-fashioned medieval walls with no frontal protection against artillery, and a sconce had been erected at Shieldfield, north east of the town, to cover the Sandgate area against possible approach along the valley of the Pandon Burn.

Having stared at the map for a while, consulted my various sources and scratched my chin, I have decided to represent the northern side of the town on the table. This represents only part of the assault (which did not take place until October, for reasons which I shall attempt to explain at some point in the next few posts), but it is the easiest section to play as a game, and it does include the location of the primary artillery barrage.

This first post is primarily to show off my very approximate version of Newcastle, and the captions to the pictures will give a little more information. In later posts I'll say more about why the real siege of Newcastle does not lend itself to a game without a lot of fudging - which will involve one of Foy's infamous potted histories - and discuss some new aspects of my rules. One further advantage of setting the field up early, of course, is that I can do some experimenting with particular rule mechanisms to see how they look. The game itself will probably be in a couple of weeks (availability of commanders permitting), and it will be a collaborative, rather than a competitive, effort!

In 1644 Newcastle was a prosperous town of some 11,000 inhabitants. The section
of the town shown is seen from the north, and is rather simplified. The River Tyne is
about 2 hexes beyond the far edge - somewhere behind the chairs. Following the
visible section of the wall round from the left, you can see the Pandon Gate, the
Corner Tower, the Carliol Tower, Pilgrim Street Gate, the Ficket Tower, the Bartram
Monboucher Tower, Newgate, the Heber Tower and the Westgate. Off the table, on the left
the wall loops around to the Sandgate, which is on the riverfront, and on the right it
meets the river near to the Closegate. The bits of white paper are to help me memorise
the names of the key locations. 

General view from the north east.

View from The Leazes, where General Baillie set up his batteries. The hexes are
about 200 paces across the flats, so you can estimate that the range is about 800
to 1000 paces from the hills. I believe the football stadium would feature prominently
somewhere in the middle of such a view of the modern city. 

General view from the north west.

Looking from the Castle, towards Newgate Street.

View towards the Newgate, inside the walls - get your ticket for the guided walk...

Pilgrim St Gate from the top of Pilgrim St.

The new fort added by Lord Glemham at Shieldfield - it looks a little more grand
than it really was - it occupies 2 hexes, and was manned by about 300 musketeers.

Somewhere via this link you will find an entertaining little dramatisation of some of the key issues of the real siege - click on the movie and you will meet some of the principal characters - notably Sir John Marley (the town mayor) and the Earl of Leven (the commander of the Scottish army outside).  They are heavily disguised, apparently, but you get the idea. I'll introduce them again in a later part of this short series of posts.

Hooptedoodle #251 - Warm Feet

I am extremely fortunate to have sustained such sound health - I try not to take it for granted, and I suppose I moan a bit, like everyone else, but I really am grateful. All those years of running and hill-walking and playing squash, and a natural tendency to eat sensibly have all helped, I guess, but I am lucky enough to have been assembled with a good engine. I do not know by what justice or serendipity these things happen, but thank you, anyway - whoever.

I take a minimal amount of medication - nothing alarming, but it includes a daily 5mg of Amlodipine (and if I've spelled that incorrectly then I am secretly pleased, since it is evidence that I do not worry about it enough to remember). This little pill is intended to keep my blood pressure down - whether I need it or not is the topic of a gentle debate each year with my GP. Anyway, I take it. The blood pressure is OK, and the only noticeable side-effect of the pills is that I am almost always cold. I wear thermal underwear from September to April and I have developed a very close relationship with a microwaveable bean-bag which has become one of my best friends. My wife has obtained a cunning duvet which has dissimilar weights on the two sides, so that she does not have to suffer the weight and the heat which I need these days.

In short, I am well looked after, and my problems with temperature are trivial, but I have started to take the winters personally.

Not too long ago, the Contesse presented me with a pair of heavyweight knitted bed-socks. Most kind, but I thanked her and rather hurriedly stored the things away in the pyjama drawer. Bed-socks? I had a strong feeling that I would have to get a matching night-cap, Ebenezer Scrooge model, like the wicked uncle in Kidnapped. I have no problem with bed-socks, of course, except that starting to wear them might feel like another step on a slippery slope.

When a respectable time had passed, and the winds of January were getting ever colder, I discreetly dug out the socks one night. Well, just once wouldn't do any harm, would it? I was a bit concerned that they would feel unfamiliar, and would disturb me, but I had no problems. I now recommend bed-socks wholeheartedly, have felt warmer and more relaxed in bed, and have even asked for some more. I am, of course, still playing it a bit quiet. I do not intend to appear in any advertising.

On the coldest days I tend to wear two sweaters at the moment. My faith in knitwear is restored. The Contesse passed me the following picture - as a joke, but it does make you think.

On the hobby front, I have now based and flagged a regiment of Spanish light infantry which the Mad Padre was kind enough to paint for me (thanks again, Mike) and am looking at what painting I should do next myself. I am intending to persevere with my plans for an ECW siege (loosely based on Newcastle 1644), and I'll write some preliminary stuff on that, starting later this week.

Hooptedoodle #250 - Steve Jobs Says No

This is eventually going to develop into a gentle whinge, so whingeophobes should leave smartly. As a background project - more of a private ambition, really, I intend to improve my knowledge of the Thirty Years War sometime soon. I know some bits of the history and some of the names, but my line of thinking is thus:

This was an important period of European history, I don't know very much about it, and I think I probably should know a bit more. It might make me a better, more rounded person (unlikely) and I might find it interesting (less unlikely).

I have Peter H Wilson's highly praised The Thirty Years War - Europe's Tragedy, which I've skimmed and which looks very good. I bought it about 2 years ago. The main problems have been:

(1) The last two years have been a bit hectic for me - very little free time or peace of mind to settle to it, because - with the best will in the world...

(2) ...it is a big book. Substantial. It is a serious piece of work, to be approached with appropriately monastic dedication. Anything less would be selling both me and Dr Wilson short.

So I decided that I might be better to start with something shorter and higher level, so I can find some kind of timeline or skeleton on which I can hang a more detailed study. This is the Foy Approach to problem solving - start with some one-liners and a nice map or two, and then find where are the hooks and trapdoors to get closer to the details.

So I purchased CV Wedgwood's volume on the subject - a bit long in the tooth now, maybe, since it dates from 1938, and our collective view of Germany has evolved a little since then, but Dame Veronica is always a comfortable read, I find, if somewhat over-partial at times. I bought a paperback, American edition which set me back some £12 or so. It is smaller than Wilson's book, and I have actually started reading it. Good so far. The plan is, once I've finished it, to return to the worthy Europe's Tragedy with a few more lights on and greater enthusiasm.

One (debatable) brainwave was the idea that I might augment my efforts with an audiobook - I listen to audiobooks a lot when I'm out in my van, so I thought that might be useful. We might discuss how an audiobook would work without any maps to hand, but you can see what I was thinking. So I went to the excellent website of Librivox, and downloaded a suitably hefty, three-part freebie, which is an unabridged reading of a translation of Schiller's great standard history.

Now that is a very fair pedigree, you have to admit. I could feel the scholarship gland swelling just at the idea - sadly, the reality was less happy. The product is free, so it almost seems above criticism, but I could not warm to the narrator, the language (translated, at that) is ponderous in the extreme. Indigestible. I found I could drive along quite happily, thinking about something else, while the pearls of Schiller droned on in the background. So I'd run it back a bit, and try to locate the point at which I had lost the plot (so to speak), and the same thing would happen. I also had a faint worry that I might become a danger on the roads if I paid more attention to the goings-on in Germany.

In truth, the main problem is the text - in whatever tongue, Schiller's work comes from a period when it was necessary for historians - nay, scholars of all types - to write in a lofty and long-winded manner which demonstrated their stature and their great wisdom. The actual transmission of knowledge seems so much a lesser objective that at times I wonder whether they even thought it was necessary.

Schiller/Librivox - strike. Not for me.

Being a stubborn sort of fellow, or a slow learner, if you prefer, I located an unabridged audiobook version of CV Wedgwood's history, narrated by one Charlton Griffin. I listened to an extract, and it really sounded very promising, though the issue about the maps remains, of course. Good-oh - so how do I get one?

Well, my friends at Amazon offered me a free download copy, no less, but I would have to subscribe to Audible, which is Amazon's audio-book version of the age-old book-of-the-month-club racket, and would cost me £7.99 a month indefinitely thereafter. No, thanks - I do not care if I then have access to 200,000 audiobooks - I do not wish to even think about 200,000 audiobooks. I swerved that solution.

Next up, I found that I could download the same book for about £8 from iTunes. OK - after some thought, I did this. It comes down as M4P files, which will only play on an Apple device and which cannot legally be converted to more mainstream MP3. In fact I had a pretty good idea this is what would happen, and I do have an iPhone and an iMac, and we have the iTunes player app installed on various other devices, but not, alas, on my van. I could, of course, hook up my iPhone to the van's BlueTooth, or even just plug the beggar in, but it is more hassle than I would choose.

Now we get to sanctimony, so I tread warily here. I can understand that audio and music files should be protected in some way, not just to boost Apple's profits, but to maintain any chance of the recorded music industry surviving. It is customary at this point to bleat on about how I have purchased these files, and thus am the owner, and should be able to play them on anything I want - I would quite like it if this argument carried some weight, but the reality is that I have paid £8 for a set of files which are intended only to play on Apple kit or via Apple's licensed software. I knew this before I bought them, and that is what I have bought - I have no further rights.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, it is worth bearing in mind that Steve Jobs, before he became a lay saint, was not the least sanctimonious person in history. It should also be remembered that an operating system upgrade for one of the early iPhones (or it might have been an iPod - I don't actually care which) deliberately deleted any non-iTunes musical files from the customer's device, even if he had purchased the tracks legally from some other source. I believe Apple did get into hot water over this, and rightly so, but the logic was originally that Mr Jobs felt he should protect Apple's financial position by making it impracticable for i-device owners to buy their music elsewhere (though there was no such Term or Condition of use accompanying the sale of the device), and - primarily - because Apple thought they could get away with it. Given the background, I do not find the idea of someone ripping them off so terrible.

If anyone has any idea how to convert M4P files into MP3, so I can listen while I'm driving, then - entirely out of academic, theoretical interest, of course, I would be happy to learn. Not that I would ever do such a thing, you understand.

Auldhame Castle - Boots and Old Stones

Auldhame Castle as it is today, on the edge of a cliff - view from the North West

There is no escape - relentlessly, true to yesterday's post, I dug the boots and the camera out, the thermal underwear and the weatherproof trousers, and I walked the 600 yards through the woodland from my house to Auldhame Castle. Before you ask why I have never visited the place before, I can only say that I seem to have been busy.

Auldhame Castle was a fortified house built, probably on or near the site of an earlier building (which may have been some form of religious retreat - see later), in about 1530, by Adam Otterburn of Reidhall, who was sometime Lord Provost of Edinburgh (from 1538 until his term of office was ended by the Rough Wooing), Lord Advocate to James V of Scotland and later secretary to James' second wife, Mary of Guise. Adam was murdered in Edinburgh in 1558.

Since he also had a residence at Reidhall (or Redhall), in Edinburgh, Auldhame may have been the family farm or a country seat, but it was a substantial structure. It was an L-shaped building - the North wing faced onto the cliffs over the Forth, on the East Lothian coast, and much of that is still standing and recognisable; the South-East wing has mostly disappeared - about all that remains is the entrance door.

Trouble with neighbours? - Tantallon, the seat of the "Red" Douglas family, is
just across a field and a little bay from Auldhame. Since Otterburn advised
James V on a treason charge against the Douglas household in 1528, it seems
odd that he chose to build next door to them. The field in the foreground is
called Old Adam, and it is here that the burial ground was discovered in
2005 - I had read that "Adam" was a corruption of Auldhame, but I prefer to
believe it is named after old Adam Otterburn

Entrance to the vanished South wing

This photo is borrowed from elsewhere - note the cloverleaf motif

Vaulted cellar area below the remaining building

In these parts, the ivy always wins in the end

Good heavens - could that be a ghostly hand waving - can you see it too...?

The flat area on which the house was built is bounded by a bank (and
the footings of an old wall, somewhere under the trees), built on top of a sandstone face

The ground is hard to figure out, because of the subsequent growth of the forest, the
progressive collapse of the cliffs in front of the house, building of more recent
walls and field structures and a fair amount of anti-tank defences left
over from WW2 - the beach here was a source of constant worry as an invasion site
(from Norway?)

This  is not a sandstone cliff - it is WW2 concrete!

No-one really knows when the building ceased to be used. One theory is that Cromwell's boys slighted it as part of a general reduction of defensible buildings in the area after the Battle of Dunbar, another is that it was already derelict by then, though it was not very old. Auldhame appears (as Oldham) on John Speed's map of Scotland in 1610 - there was almost certainly a village (probably of timber huts) in addition to the Castle. This has been swept away - nowadays the hamlet of Auldhame comprises a line of terraced farm cottages on the A198, and the large 19th Century Auldhame House, which has no connection with (and is half a mile from) the old Castle.

Just as a reminder, this is what it is supposed to have looked like around 1600
 - viewed from the same angle as my first photo - the cliffs were further away then!

During the time I have lived nearby, there was a major archeological dig (2005) in a corner of one of the fields of Auldhame Farm, next to the wood containing the castle. A Christian burial site and some form of religious building were examined, and after some debate it was decided that they probably dated from the 8th or 9th Century, possibly contemporary with our local saint, St Baldred, who is thought to have lived at Auldhame. St Baldred is a complex subject - if you can be bothered, I recommend you check him out on Wikipedia. Apart from surfing across to the Bass Rock on a rock, he also managed to be buried in three separate places - a tricky fellow.

ECW - Work on Sieges, and the Distraction of Local Ruins

Within the next few weeks I intend to get out my ECW siege bits and pieces, and have a more formal attempt at a siege. One of my invited guests will be David the Cruncher, my chiropractor, who appeared in this blog a little while ago when he came here to be introduced to wargaming. In honour of his South Shields origins, on that occasion we played a game based on the Battle of Boldon Hill, which in reality had never quite been a proper battle at all, but the fact that David’s uncle lives in one of the villages on the battlefield was an overwhelming case in favour of the scenario.

My intended action this time will be "Something a Little Bit Like the Siege of Newcastle" (1644) – you will hear more of this shortly. Because of the impending presence of guest generals (and my experience of guest generals is that the beggars sometimes wish to have some idea what is going on), I am working on tidying up the rules, and writing them out in a form which might be understood by someone apart from me – in particular, all the scribbled pencil tables and post-it notes need some attention.

Anyway – I hope to set out more details of all this over the coming few weeks, including (maybe) a revised draft of the siege rules. In the meantime, I have become a little diverted by some of our local castles here in East Lothian.

It is, in any case, a topic which I find interesting, and there are a great many sites around here which have history related to the ECW. The most recent distraction came during my studies of the activities of the Covenanter Armies – I was reading about the East Lothian regiment which marched into Northumberland with Lord Leven (subsequently appearing at, for example, Marston Moor and the sieges of York and Newcastle), and it seems that the colonel and patron of this unit was Sir Patrick Hepburn, who lived at Waughton Castle.

Now I know Waughton – it is about 4 miles from where I am sitting – and I know there is a pile of old stones and the remains of a medieval doocot (dovecot, to English readers) on the farm at Old Waughton, but I know nothing about the history of the place – it really doesn’t look very interesting.

Wrong. A quick look at Andrew Spratt’s splendid website devoted to reconstructions of Scottish castles reveals that Waughton Castle was a fine thing – in fact here it is.

Waughton

So, if it was still the home of an important local family in the mid 17^th Century, how has it vanished so completely? – so much so, in fact, that a reclusive old nerd like me (who has plenty of free time, a camera and walking boots, and lives, as I say, 4 miles away) did not even know it was there.

Mr Spratt likens the disappearance of these old fortified houses to children’s sandcastles on the beach being swept away by the tide. Yes, it is true that there were a number of dramatic incidents such as Cromwell and Monck destroying the places, but even in the cases where the places just fell into disuse there was a sort of gradual tidal wave as the locals requisitioned the stone to build houses, barns, field boundaries. I must have seen the stones of Waughton Castle many times, but they are built into farm steadings and stane dykes. They must have migrated in countless small carts and barrows over the centuries. There may be some on our garden rockery…

So I have resolved that I will take a bit more trouble to spend some time looking at Andrew’s website, and visit what is left of these local places. Apart from the well-known National Trust sites at Tantallon (Douglas family) and Dirleton (Ruthvens), within a very few miles of here I know of Waughton (Hepburn), Hailes (more Hepburns), Innerwick, Yester and many others, I also now see that the ruin in the woods on the farm here at Auldhame, which is less than a mile away and which I had previously believed to be an ancient abbey, is now thought to have been a house destroyed by Monck after the Battle of Dunbar. Hmmm – Andrew, you have my full attention. There is also a tale that the Laird of Lochhouses (2 miles from here, now a working farm) was wounded at the Battle of Dunbar, followed home by English dragoons and shot on the doorstep of his “tower” – this patently is not the extant Victorian farmhouse, so I think there must be another ruin somewhere nearby.

Hailes

Yester

Auldhame - 15 minutes squelch from here

The church at Whitekirk (also about 2 miles away) is reputed to have been used to stable some of the Roundheads’ horses after Dunbar, but there are innumerable such stories, and there is a whiff of resentful outrage in this one – as an example of the sort of heretic rascals these chaps were.

Whitekirk Parish Church

Anyway – if the weather starts to improve, I would welcome the excuse to go squelching round the local countryside in search of ancient stones. I shall have to stock up on pork pies to add excitement to the packed lunches.

Please note that I use Mr Spratt's illustrations without any permission to do so - if you are interested in this, I would recommend that you visit his website via the link in this post - well worth the time.

Hooptedoodle #249 - Not the Eighth Dwarf

A propos of absolutely nothing, I was going through my folders of family photos, and came upon this one, taken while on holiday in Sorrento in 2000 (goodness me - is it that time already?).

We went for a walk up to St Agata, which is a good climb above Sorrento, and then on to the ancient convent of Il Deserto, which is on the road over the hill to Massa Lubrense. Past the convent there is the Hotel O Sole Mio (no, really), which in 2000 used to cater almost exclusively for German tour companies. The only reason I mention this at all is to explain the picture - along the side of the road was a line of plastic gnomes - I think they were Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, though now I study the photo I'm not so sure - and I was amused by this homely touch in a land of treasures and fine art. The entrance to the hotel car park was adorned with a plastic statue of Jesus, as you see, which struck me as a rather idiosyncratic complement to the group.

This is all mere whimsy - a fleeting moment of quirkiness in a pleasant holiday from years ago. In passing, I might mention that we last visited the area in 2010, and naturally we couldn't pass up on the chance of retracing our walk to Massa, but the little road had been redeveloped a good bit - the hotel had been replaced with a nice new one (and, it has to be said, the old one looked a bit of a dump), and Snow White and her augmented entourage were no more.

I am also reminded that in 2000 a local dog insisted on attaching itself to us, despite everything we tried to discourage it, and walked all the way with us from just past Il Deserto to Massa Lubrense. I was very concerned that the poor thing would be lost forever. When we went into a cafe in Massa for a well-earned drink (we took the bus back), the dog happily sloped off back up the road. I have to assume/hope that it got home safely; in fact, it probably joined tourists for the walk over the hills every day.

Another photo from the same holiday - maybe even the same walk - reveals a strange, slim version of MSFoy with rather more hair - scary - now that seems far longer ago than the holiday! It looks as though I may have been worrying about the dog...