Battle of Newbury Drive-by

On the way down to the Lutzen game I wanted to do a quick walk of the First Battle of Newbury as I'm just setting that up in the gaming table. As it was the weather was so bad I restricted myself to a quick drive-by and only dived out once to get a photo, and took one even from inside! Anyway it was useful to get a sense of the lie of the land and will certainly inform the build. What is notable is that the A34 bypass basically runs down the length of the Parliamentary line! I'll remember to keep a better eye out next time I'm driving down it to Portsmouth.

Looking NW from the upper right arrow on the map towards the main battle ground

Looking SW from the upper arrow on the map towards the Parliamentarian lines

Looking N from the lower left arrow to the area around Biggs Hill

Battle of Towton 1461 - Battlefield Walk

Heading back from dropping elder daughter off at Durham, and seeing as the dog needed a walk I decided to go and take a look at Towton as it's only about 10 mins off the M1/A1(M)/M18. We left it a bit late, and a huge rain storm had just been through, so every thing was wet, muddy, and eventually dark!

An official walk was set up a few years ago with 10 information points. Unfortunately its really around the rear of the Lancastrian position, so apart from the spur out to Point #2 in the middle of the Yorkist lines you cant really walk over the big field in the middle of the road fork, so the Towton Dale/North Acres area where most of the fight would have been.

Looking S from the cross to the Lancastrian R/York L

The walk is on a reasonably well kept wide path between fields and is about 3km. It takes you from the cross along the edge of the Cock Beck, and then into Towton. We turned round at #9 as I didn't want to bring Paddy back along the road in the dark (the roadside path was more or less impassable).

From cross to the centre of the battlefield

In the image above the lone tree is just behind the York centre. Not really evident in the photo is that there are 4 (4!) major power stations visible on the horizon - including Ferrybridge (the sight of the skirmish the day before). It probably just highlights how empty this area is!

The real take-way from the walk is how deep a gorge/valley the Cock Beck is in. This image shows the start of the drop - and you can easily see how routing troops in moderate armour would soon be toast as they slipped and slid down a steep muddy bank. "Bloody Meadow" is more or less in the middle of the photo.

Paddy learning about medieval weaponry!

It was getting dark by the end! This is from #2, looking from the Yorkist centre to the Lancastrian lines. Towton dale which cuts across from L to R is quite pronounced, and this was only just up the S (York) slope, so the view N towards the Lancastrian lines was very limited - my guess is that the main York position would be further S up the slope so as to get a better view - which matches the battle diagram above rather than the board description. Again the slope being quite pronounced would have readily facilitated a field of carnage in the dale with muddy ground and lots of armour.

Overall whilst a quite minimalist site its really is an atmospheric place, and when we visited it probably as bleak as it was on the day!

"New" Bosworth Battlefield Walk

Having acquired a dog it appears that one of the advantages will be an increase in the number of battlefield walks - you might as well have walkies somewhere interesting!

For a first outing we went to the "new" Bosworth battlefield. We Parked up at Shenton and then walked across the huge fields to Fenn Lane Farm - pretty much through the Yorkist front line an into no-man's land according to one of the current interpretations. Crossing Fenn Lane we then walked over more fields (all arable, one incredibly ploughed up, Agincourt like) and through the Tudor lines. As we approach the canal and foot of Crown Hill on the only bit of road the fisheries and ponds gave a hint of the "mere" that was once here. Cup of tea by the canal and then along the canal (not there in 1485!) before finally striking back NW across the fields, just behind a supposed artillery location, to the start.

Looking SW across battlefield - Crown Hill behind the big tree at left

Nice walk, not very scenic, but certainly shows how flat and open this space is comparison to the "old" site, and the Crown Hill ridge is a very mild rise above the rest of the terrain.

My 2016 table with deployment areas - photo above position in yellow

Hougoumont Weekend

Gardner's House is white building on left

Nick, Alan and I had a great weekend staying in the Landmark Trust apartment at Hougoumont. It sleeps 4 (2 bedrooms), and whilst not cheap it's a real experience as after the tourists and museum staff have gone home you've got the whole place to yourself!

The sitting room

The apartment is in the Gardner's House - the one above the South Gate. The Chateau itself was never rebuilt after the battle, and the Farmer's House was also pulled down - so it's the only accommodation building left - and you have all of its upper floor. There is a good sized living/dining room (4' x 4' table for gamers, and space to take a 6' x 4' board on it), galley kitchen, one bedroom on the same floor (who's outer window lets you shoot on those approaching the South Gate, toilet & shower rooms, and then upstairs another bedroom with an attic window above the South Gate.

The Gardener's House from inside the courtyard

The gardner's house from inside the courtyard. The flat occupies the row of windows on the top floor and attic.

The flat has a superbly stocked library of Waterloo books, and the walls are crammed with Napoleonic prints, so its a wonderful place to go to to soak up the atmosphere, walk the courtyard and walled gardens, and think what it must have been like in 1815. The son-et-lumiere show in the barn is pretty good (the new film in the main museum by the Butte is excellent by the way), and it's a useful small museum on the site (you have to pay).

Gardener's House from outside - South gate below

One interesting debate is those two filled in white windows - essentially the back of the living room now.

If you look at this contemporary print of the battlefield they are also shown as filled in:

1817 Print from 1815 sketch - William Mudford’s ‘Battle of Waterloo’, 1817

Event though almost every later painting and diorama shows soldiers shooting through them!

Were they blocked up following the battle - or were they like that during it!

The main modelling note though was that the main barns need thatched roofs not tile ones - so need some modelling clay to cover the tilework on the Hovels version!

I also took the chance to take a couple of 360/720 degree photosphere's, one in the courtyard and one in the garden/pasture. You can find them on Google Maps (activate Streetview man) at:

• Courtyard
• Garden/Pasture (event tent erected)

I took along the Command Magasine game of  Hougoumont: Rock of Waterloo to play. It's an SPI type boardgame with about 1 counter = 100 men/1 company. We didn't manage to play to completion as we started twice (the map now has atmospheric blood/wine stains across it), but it seems a good game although you do get a sense of playing to the rules not the scenario (our 2nd game looked very different to the first), and my feeling was that it is an easier  task for the French in real life.

I also had a set of simple skirmish rules for Hougoumont that we didn't get chance to play, and also tempted to try a scenario with Sharp Practice to get to some sort of Napoleonic Skirmish scenario for the place.

We also played a bit of D&D, but the big hit was Palazzo, a Rio Grande mid-size game, over in about 40-60 mins, interesting decisions on every turn - well recommended!

Alan and Nick playing D&D

All in all a great weekend, and well recommended.

Battle of Bussaco - 27 Sep 1810 - Battlefield Tour

I've got to present a conference paper in Coimbra this week, and seeing as its only 20-30km from Bussaco I thought it would be silly not to spend the weekend there first. It also just happens that the convent that was there during the battlefield is now surrounded by the Grand Palace Hotel - formerly a Ducal residence and now a faded but wonderful 5-starish hotel - which Deb and I actually managed to get at a good, if not cheap rate for the weekend. Taxi from Coimbra was Euro33.

I'm blogging this in the rather sumptuous lounge of the palace have seen the sights (or at least what we could on foot with rain looming in 26 degree temperatures and no decent map) this morning. So here's a photo-essay of the trip.

The Palace itself. Totally over the top decoration, even the pillars have pillars. The orange roofed/ochre walled building in the left side is the old convent (actually a monastery in English terms).

There are a whole load of tiled murals of Portuguese history and legend inside and out. There are about half-a-dozen relating the battle - this one showing the Portuguese and British troops repelling the French as they assault the ridge.

Nice one of Massena and his staff.

And Wellington to balance it out.

A nice study of a Dragoon trumpeter.

The first part of today's walk was up to the small museum (2 Euros) just outside the huge enclosed area (~3km x 4km?) of the convent forest.

Portuguese Line infantry man 1:1 painted outside the museum.

Inside the museum was a nice diorama of the battle with what looked like 25mm commercial figs and claiming to be 1/100th scale, but didn't look like 15s and too small to be 1/100 ground scale or even 1 figure = 100 men. There was also a smaller diorama made up of Airfix figs!

The walls had a nice big scale map of the battlefield and dispositions, and also a couple of huge charts of Portuguese Army units and which battles they fought in, including small skirmishes, and the strength by each rank of each unit of the Allied Army.

From a modelling point of view one of the most interesting aspects were two dummies of Cacadores - their uniforms being more of a khaki that the richer brown shown in the L&F books.

From the museum it was a short walk up to the battle monument,

The monument sits on the ridge above Sula, so just above where Crauford's Light Division repulsed Ney's attack. The slope is to steep and wooded to see it properly though. There is a good view however out E towards Moura where Marchand went against Pack's Portuguese.

We (well I) then wanted to walk out to Wellington's command post further along the ridge. Unfortunately its position was only very roughly marked on one local map, and not at all on another. Also paths beyond the convent walls were not shown! So we walk along a path about as far as the SE end of the convent wall which is in the right area, but couldn't see any sign - perhaps we should have stuck to the road route. However this certainly took us along the area occupied by Coleman's 6th Portuguese Brigade and where it was attacked by the lost 2/32nd Ligne. Whilst it would not have been so wooded this photo gives you an idea of the steepness and roughness of the terrain. We were even using hands to get over some of the outcrops.

Having failed to find the command post we turned from home, and at the Cruz Alta you get a superb view SE of the back of the length of the ridge.

And also out onto the plain to the SW.

It certainly highlights how the Bussaco ridge was the last serious obstacle to Massena before he could spread out onto the coastal plain.

A nice walk back through the woods along the Via Sacra, with some incredible terracotta style lifesized models of the stages of the cross, each housed in a little building with a bit barred door - luckily the smartphone camera just fitted between the bars (and most were nowhere nearly as well naturally illuminated as this one)!

The last stop was to actually look into the convent (2 Euros) where Wellington stayed (see plaque at top of the article).

The centre of the convent is a small chapel, and then all around the corridor that surrounds it on 4 sides are the small cells of the monks. I wonder which one Wellington commandeered?

The most amazing thing about the place is that all the doors and the ceiling beams are covered in the cork bark that grows locally. It gives the whole place a very organic feel, but I guess it's a great insulator.

One final Napoleonic photo - the old olive tree outside the convent where Wellington is alleged to have tied his horse.

The whole site around the hotel was busy all weekend with tour groups, a kids festival and a car rally - so it's nice to see that the place isn't too forgotten (or exclusive).

Overall a great weekend, a lovely place to stay, and a nice walk. But really you'll need a car to see the full extent of the battle as distances are big and paths poor - and a lot better map!

Oh, and this is the room I'm blogging from.

Naseby Recce

It's nice when work and play come together. Whilst the initial work on our virtual field-trip system (Fieldscapes - more later) was focussed on geography/geology field-trips that kind Mr Gove had the history syllabus re-written so that it now places more emphasis on battles - particular ECW and the overseas ones we won (Waterloo, Blenhiem etc), so it's time to see what Fieldscapes can do for the virtual battlefield tour.

So I got to spend a very nice day today walking around Naseby, Glenn Faord's book in hand, taking lots of photos. The landscape model is already in and looks pretty good, and also shows most of the various points that Glenn makes, particularly about whether it was Rupert or Fairfax that made the first lateral move based on what Rupert could see as he left Clipston.

As well as panoramas I also took some 360 degree photospheres which I'll post up to Google Maps in due course.

Here are a few choice photos:

The main battlefield, look N from the Parliamentary lines, by Cromwell's memorial

Looking S from the Royalist R flank, roughly along back of Sulby hedges

Click for full panorama from the ROC Viewpoint of the retreat

Bloodyman's Ford, Market Harborough, where many were slain and the King nearly captured

I'll post a link and video of the app once we have a first cut.

Battle of Lansdown - 5 Jul 1643 - Battlefield Walk

Panorama centred on East just behind the ridge

A nice day trip to Lansdown Hill to meet up with some guys from the Battlefields Trust to discuss a possible future work project and a prototype we're building based on the Battle of Lansdown,

Looking down off  the ridge from Slaughter Hill, west end of the ridge

Lovely early summer weather, and really nice when work and military history/wargaming collide. Must make sure I do Lansdown as part of my ECW battle sequence next year (doing 1642 this year). Only about 5-6000 a side.