B is for Basingrad Bronze

These have been in Picasa since the autumn of 2014, so it's about time they got an airing, although they will probably be of more interest to the War Gamers or general historians than the toy collectors, but I try to entertain all sorts here!

This is one of several models of Basing House (or 'Basing Castle') we will be looking at over the next few days and is the all-weather outdoor site-model of the whole siege-area, cast in bronze and positioned so that you can place the remains in the context of the time - we won't look at the remains, they really aren't anything to look at and I didn't photograph them!

I believe the walls were part of a more permanent or existing defence, but most of the banks and ditches (not the main dry-moats to the house complex but those further out) are from the ECW siege.

Another view of the main house complex which was actually two houses, the old circular-walled 'Norman' fortified house and the more modern 'New House' where the family lived in rather grander splendor that the old buildings could provide, the two entered through a citadel gatehouse to the North - removed by vandals.

At this scale the New House looks to be a nice Elizabethan country house, maybe half timbered and a bit posh, and it was all those, but it was also as heavily fortified as the old house and made for war not Waugh; If you get what I mean!

The whole site - mid-siege; the Parliamentary forces surrounding the house on the river plains, while the Royalists sit on the hill slowly getting hungry!

I think this would benefit from a midnight commando raid (it's not terribly secure) with a handful of micro-tanks so that the next day tourists find a motorised panzer regiment streaming in from the top, while tank destroyers sit waiting in the village with an A/T-gun screen and a mixed battle group is strung-out over the old main camp of Parliament to hold the wing and direct the armour along the river toward the anti-tank ambush!

One day I'll drink enough to get caught doing it - torch in my teeth; "Peow-peow"!