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.

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 9: The Next Alsace House

The inspiration for this house is based on these photographs taken of Froeschwiller shortly after the battle. Many of these houses still stand today, albeit significantly refurbished.

From these images I have made this piece, an all stone barn base with a timbered living quarters upstairs with a small courtyard and stairs at the back leading to the living quarters...I am glad not to live there and have to carry the groceries up those steps!

Building number four in this series, a much prettier structure, is in the final stages of construction now. 

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 8: Another Alsace House

Well Blogger's ongoing RSS feed issue all but buried my last post, so here's hoping that one displays a bit more speedily. EDIT : Wouldn't you know, this one appeared inside three minutes!

This  building was inspired by these images captured on a Goggle Street View "drive through" of modern day Froeschwiller. I quite liked the mix of house and barn - another byre house - as well as the mix of stone barn and timbered house.

Common in the region (and can be a bit of a pain to model) is the bonnet roof with its varied pitch and half-hipped gable that looks as though it has been clipped off, and the pent roofs that provide protection from weather for the lower timber joints, exposed beams and plasterwork, while providing cover to windows and entry ways. Most of the buildings I will do in this series will feature this type of roofing.

Two more Alsacian houses are on the work table and one or two more will follow that...the final number will be dependant on the amount roof tile sheet I have left towards the end.

 

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 7: The First of the Alsace Houses

The inspiration for the first building of this set is this house from the village of Morsbronn:

My interpretation is a little different, but I hope it keeps the general feel.

The wooden balcony at the front and the open verandah at the back are made from plasticard and the scalloped roof tiles are a plasticard sheet - the scallops are a little over sized, but that was the only size available.

I haven’t completed work on the base yet because I have yet to decide how the village will fit together. Once a few more buildings are finished, and there will be five or six in total, I will sort the basing out.

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 6: The Lorraine Houses Completed!

These two end pieces complete the Lorraine village-rue. They are both rather plain residences.

The first is a narrow hipped roof building. 

Front and side

Side and back

The second is a rather odd shaped building. I could have made it a regular shape, but I had to change the roofing material I was using because I couldn't find any stock of the original. This new material is in smaller sheets which left some odd shaped off-cuts that I figured needed to be used - also I had bought the last two packs of the material. So I adjusted the shape of the building around the left-overs.

Front and side

Side and back

Also completed are the first three of the garden wall pieces. There are a variety of widths to these pieces but the depth is a standard 60mm so that a 60x40mm stand can be placed inside. These are made from a variety of offcuts and there will be will be another six or so pieces, in various stages of repair and with differing amounts of foliage, thst will be made as I work on other projects. Of course, in a real village the yards would be much deeper than I have made them (contemporary maps, photographs and sketches show them 50-100 metres deep) and cluttered with outhouses, storage sheds, gardens and small orchards, but these are wargames buildings - that depth would make them too big on the table and the clutter would make them impractical for gaming.

So lined up as a village here are all thirteen of the houses.

 Now, along with the church, in a couple of variations, with a bit of AI assistance from Google Gemini.

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 5: The Village Houses - Nearly Done.

One hundred and fifty-six years ago today 190,000 German soldiers, supported by 730 guns, fought a French army of 112,000 and 520 guns across an eleven kilometre front in the Battle of Gravelotte - St Privat. By the end of the day 6,400 were dead, 21,000 were wounded and a further 5,000 were missing. 

The 9th Jäger Battalion at Gravelotte by Ernst Zimmer

So it is fitting that  this post should be a Franco-Prussian War one, representing buildings of the style found on or near that battlefield. Of course the way Blogger is acting at the moment this post probably won't appear on blog rolls until after the anniversary

The first model is the last of the street byre houses, i.e. with only two textured faces.

Front

Back

The last two are designed as end pieces so are textured in three sides rather than two. One is the final byre house in the series, this one with a hipped roof.

Front and side

Back and side

The other is a residence, with a small yard...just big enough to accomodate one of my infantry stands.

Front and side

Back and side

Finally, a couple of shots showing the buildings in street row.

 Only two buildings to go in this series now and they are half completed as I type this.