Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 10: Chocolate Box Alsace House

Inspiration for this 'Chocolate Box' house comes from the area near Colmar, a pretty town  about 50 kilometers south of Strasbourg. Famous for its colourful timbered houses and the area La Petite Venise where the banks of the Lauch River are flanked by pastel coloured homes laden with flower boxes.

As tempting as these waterside houses are they are rather limiting for a wargames table so I have drawn on this house (actually a wine merchant's premises) in Kayserberg, a couple of kilometres north west of Colmar.

For my purposes this needed to be made a little less 21st Century pretty and more 19th Century practical with a field stone outbuilding appended to one side and a small courtyard. It is taller than others I have done in this series and with a steeper pitch to the roof. Buildings of three or four stories are common in an area where taxes were calculated on ground surface area and to get around that tax many made use of  cantilevered upper levels to gain floor space out compromising the footprint (I used a cantilevered balcony in the first building of this series, I have a slight cantilever here and am using it again in the next build). This one also features multi-tiered dormer windows (another common feature that provided ventilation and drying space clothes or grain storage). I have, however, retained the window boxes on the upper windows to keep that 'chocolate box' charm.

I still have enough roofing material to make two more buildings and the next one will be another 'Chocolate Box' house before I return to a more grounded example.