Cropredy 375

-
Rather than cluttering up my ECW Travelogue guide to Cropredy Bridge, I decided to post a second entry which is purely devoted to my snaps from the Sealed Knot's Cropredy 375 event.

The Living History camp...




 
The battle...
 











 













 












If you enjoyed reading this, or any of the other posts, please consider supporting the blog. 
Thanks.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coat Colours Part 1: Parliamentarian Regiments of Foot

-
Image
When I first started my Civil War gaming project I relied upon the many ECW coat colour tables on wargaming websites. As my project has progressed, my library has got bigger, my research has gone back to primary sources rather than relying upon second and third hand sources; and I have noticed quite a few errors in these lists for wargamers. I have also noticed the same errors appearing in multiple lists.     As a result of continually seeing 'the London Trained Bands and their Auxiliaries wore red coats' (there is no evidence supporting this at all, the evidence, whilst not explicit suggests that the London Trained Bands wore civilian clothes - some of the Auxiliaries might have been issued with blue winter coats) I decided to write my own list.  So here it is. If your allegiance lies elsewhere you might want to look at  Introduction   Part 2  Royalist coat colours Part 3  Scots coat colours Part 3B ...
Read more

Coat Colours Part 2: Royalist Regiments of Foot

-
Image
Continuing my therapeutic blogging (write rather than rant) antidote to incorrect English Civil War coat colour tables for wargamers, I give you the Royalist Regiments of Foot. For all of my coat colour articles see: Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part 3  Scots coat colours Part 3B  Montrose and the Irish Brigade Part 4  Dragoons, Horse and the New Model Army coat colours The Trained Bands London Trained Bands Auxiliary regiments Scarves   Same rules apply here, as they did with the Parliamentarian coat colours: Regiments often got renamed when command passed to a new colonel - these regiments are listed under their first name e.g. Jacob Astley's Regiment was originally Richard Fielding's Regiment. Coat colour notes refer to contemporaneous references and some of the deductions made by Reid, Spring,  Peachey and Prince. You will also notice that some regiments have several coat colours listed. Where there is some question aro...
Read more

Warlord Pike and Shotte Epic Battles: the infantry sprue

-
Image
Firstly a big thank you to Warlord Games who sent me a sprue of their new Pike and Shotte Epic Battles infantry. (You can see how I got on with the cavalry sprue here. ) I will try and look at these figures from three different angles: the first impression of someone completely new to the period, the button counter’s standpoint, and then from a seasoned wargamer’s point of view. In all cases I'm looking at these through Wars of the Three Kingdoms spectacles. (Wars of the Three Kingdoms is a more accurate name for the conflicts that were fought in the British Isles in the mid seventeenth century. The English Civil War was just one of these conflicts.) The obligatory next to a ruler picture (the ruler is lined up with the soles of their footwear) The 'new to the period' view This one sprue provides enough figures for one unit (a Regiment of Foot or RoF). Figures look very detailed, moulding is clean and crisp with no flash and only minimal mould lines. The pikes look a bit d...
Read more

Coat Colours Part 5: The Trained Bands

-
Image
As I was about to post about the Tower Hamlet's Regiment of the London Trained Bands, and about to go down my usual ranty rabbit hole about coat colours I thought it better to write a general post about Trained Bands. This got out of hand a little and became the coat colours series, without even touching upon the Trained Bands.  When I first started my ECW project I took at face value lots of information from what I believed to be 'trusted' sources: it only took a little  cursory reading to quickly realise that many of these 'trusted' sources replicate the same errors. Which is why my original Tower Hamlet's Regiment wore red coats and carried the 'wrong' flag. They were quickly given the correct flag, but the red coat issue was slowly nagging me. They have since been rechristened John Birch's, and the Tower Hamlets LTB has been raised anew. This post is a bit more than  Coat Colours Part 5 Introduction   Part 1  Parliamentarian coat colours Part ...
Read more

Houses of Interest: Tayside

-
Image
Yet more Scottishness from the ECWtravelogue summer jolly... Blair Castle Blair Castle , was garrisoned for the Royalist Engager cause, but was besieged by the New Model Army who took it quickly in 1650. bronze mortar barrel, inscribed "Thomas Pitt made this peece 1614", it also bears the Rose of England and Iacobus Rex The castle entrance hall is resplendently bedecked with C16th and C18th militaria, alas no clearly identifiable C17th weaponry.  James Stanley, Lord Strange The family are closely related to James Stanley, Lord Strange (yes, that Lord Strange, who lost his head at Bolton), as a result there are a number of Stanley family portraits Outside the Castle entrance there are a number of artillery barrels. the majority of which are C16th, there is also an early C17th mortar. John, Earl of Atholl As ardent supporters of the crown, there are a large number of portraits of Charles I and his immediate family. Prince Rupert of the Rhine The tapestry room sports elaborate t...
Read more

Houses of Interest: Lothian

-
Image
The inappropriately named ECWtravelogue turns its attention to Lothian, scene of Oliver Cromwell's arguably greatest military victory. See also Edinburgh Before we turn our attention to the Second Battle of Dunbar, there are a couple of other Wars of the Three Kingdoms locations worthy of our attention. Borthwick Castle's cannon scars Borthwick Castle , was besieged by Oliver Cromwell's forces in November 1650; the garrison, short on supplies, surrendered after receiving only a handful of cannon shots. The damage to the walls from this attack is still visible. Borthwick is now a wedding venue. Dirleton Castle:  post-Dunbar the castle held out and moss troopers from the castle made a considerable nuisance of themselves. So much so, that Cromwell ordered Monck and Lambert to take the castle, with 1600 men. The castle would fall due to a combination of starvation and mortar fire (destroying the drawbridge and inner gate) on the 10th November 1650. A number of the moss troopers...
Read more

A Regiment of Foot

-
Image
The question arises, what did a Regiment of Foot actually look like? As wargamers we happily put a collection of thirty figures together and call it a 'regiment'. How many men were in a 'regiment' in real life?   I'll try and have a go... One of the problems that arises with the English Civil Wars/ British Civil Wars/ Wars of Three Kingdoms is the use of language and terminology. Many military terms start becoming more widespread in their use. We start coming across uniforms, regiments, companies, and battalia. From our standpoint in the 21st Century we have very specific views of what these terms mean; but in the 17th Century such terms, like spellings, had not been standardised. Throw into the mix large holes in our knowledge, due to a lack of records and documentation, and the best we can ever hope to achieve is a 'best guess'. With these caveats I set out on my quest. The London Trained Bands and their structure is probably our best data mine for evidenc...
Read more

Warlord Pike and Shotte Epic Battles: the cavalry sprue

-
Image
As a follow up to my review of Warlord's Epic P&S foot sprue  here's my thoughts on the cavalry sprue that came with the latest (April) edition of Wargames Illustrated. April's WI: the Epic cover art reminds me of the Letraset style action picture scenes of the 1970s First off, let's have a look at the sprue as a whole. An 'interesting' choice of components for a 'cavalry' sprue, but I understand that the commercial need to 'have everything on just one sprue' dictates what is and what isn't on the sprue. I've already seen quite a few people asking which figures are which, on various forums and FB groups.  So here is a 'button counter's' view of the sprue. The un-identified figures are generic 'harquebusier type' cavalry. I note that there are two figures that look a bit more officer material than the others, and a cornet who could double up for either the dragoons or the regiments of horse. The major missing elemen...
Read more

BCW Project & Wiki mkII

-
Image
  Latest behind the scenes update - August '25 After all the tales of woe and gnashing of teeth (see here ), I'm very pleased to report that: the BCW Project & Regimental Wiki is back! Slightly different domain though: BCW-Project.org.uk  (TL;DR a long story mostly centred around corporate greed). The Project side of things: the Project is 'as it was' when it disappeared from the internet nearly 2 years ago. The Wiki link on the front page, is the only real change, as it has been set to direct to the new regimental wiki address. Over the next few months, it will see some changes, mostly updating the formatting of pages, copyright, updating privacy policies etc. You may find some links broken (this goes for the Wiki too), these are being fixed but may take some time. You will also note that the 'contribute' feature has been disabled. There's quite a few things that need sorting out. The Project side of the site is very out of date software wise, and isn...
Read more

Thank You!

-
Image
Well flabber my ghast. I really am shocked. Shocked I tell you. I started KeepYourPowderDry just under 7 3/4 years ago as a repository for all the scraps of paper that I was amassing researching my English Civil War project. I never really expected anyone to actually read it. But read it you do. Numbers slowly started appearing, a hundred one month, two hundred the next. A thousand views in a month. Wow. (Not that numbers are actually that important: although my inner secret show off does get a bit excited when a big milestone approaches.) Slowly it ticked along and numbers slowly started creeping upwards. COVID happened, the blog kept me sane as I started researching and debunking Wargamer Facts™. From the increasing correspondence I was receiving, my rambling was helping others with the slower pace of life imposed upon all of us by worldwide lockdown. The blog was developing a life and momentum of its own. Fast forward to today's page view ticking over to the ridiculous idea of n...
Read more