Keep Your Powder Dry

Update: added pictures of a 'siege hat' from the West Berkshire Museum in Newbury. Yet another task avoidance project has reared it's head. At this rate those Royalist horse will never get painted. Keen eyed visitors to the  National Civil War Centre  (NCWC) and the  Royal Armouries  will have spotted the exhibited siege engineer armour, with elongated lobster pot helmets with shoulder supports (helmet apparently so heavy that there are brackets which transfer the weight directly to the wearer's shoulders). Well, once you've seen them you are going to need some in your army aren't you? Also note the solid plate tassets, and the solid lobster pot tail. Apologies - the siege armour on display at Newark, beautifully presented but awful to try and capture with a camera due to the light streaming in Siege armour at Royal Armouries, Leeds. Again nicely displayed but suffering from sun light reflection. Close ups of an engineer'...

As I am done painting figures grey (for a while), here's the Solemn League and Covenant on parade.   If you enjoyed reading this, or any of the other posts, please consider  supporting  the blog.  Thanks .

Newbury has a lot in common with Newark, and I don't just mean the letters 'N-E-W'. Both saw significant action during the Civil Wars, both have 'showgrounds' and both are host towns for wargames shows. Your little, and not so little, ones can dress as pikemen at the museum. The First Battle of  Newbury, 20th September 1643 The war isn't going so well for Parliament, Charles has taken Banbury, Oxford, Reading and stormed Bristol. He has now set his sights on Gloucester, cue the Earl of Essex to the rescue. Essex had marched from London to beat off the Royalist threat, but now he had to return to London. ' Arty' camera angle to avoid sun's reflection The King's army wanted to halt Essex's march to London, and the two sides crossed paths at Newbury. The King arrived first, taking up position slightly to the south and west of Newbury. Essex drew his army up to confront the Royalist army  to the west of the King's lines (p...

KeepYourPowderDry packed it's passport and ventured South in search of Sir William Waller's Southern Association campaign trail. First stop - the Battle of Alton. I must confess to being rather fascinated with this battle since being a small person, we had a copy of the 'AA Book of British Towns' at home, and when there was nothing on the tellybox (which was nearly all the time, it was the early 1980s after all) I often used to leaf through it. One thing lodged in my memory, Alton Church having musket ball marks in it's door. So, as I was in the area, I thought I should go and see this famous door. St Lawrence's Church September 1643, Sir William Waller was ordered to muster forces for the protection of Hampshire, and the western approach to London. By November his command was expanded to take in forces from Kent, Surrey, Sussex, supplemented by some of the London Trained Bands regiments and the remains of his own regiments (who had been seriously du...

The Duke of Hamilton's Regiment of Foot, unlike all of my other Covenanter Regiments of Foot, did not take part at Marston Moor. Hamilton's were raised in Lanarkshire in1648 for the Second Civil War. A short lived regiment they fought in the Preston campaign, Penrith, Appleby, Stainmore, Winwick Pass, before surrendering to the New Model Army at Winwick and Warrington. The regiment carried black flags with a white saltaire, apart from the Colonel's company who had a white flag with an ermine field. I must confess I struggled to get started painting these figures; I think my experiment in working out how long it took to paint a regiment hung heavy around my neck like the ancient mariner's albatross. Once I had got jackets, trousers, wood and flesh out of the way the process became less onerous. If you enjoyed reading this, or any of the other posts, please consider  supporting  the blog.  Thanks .

Sir Arthur Aston’s Regiment of Foot were the garrison regiment at Oxford. Needless to say they didn't get out much. Raised in Oxford in 1643, a detachment went to the relief of Greenland House, which is about as exciting as their battle honours get, before surrendering in 1646. Nice flag though. We don't know what colour coats his regiment wore, but as governor of Oxford Aston was often accompanied by a company of red coated halberdiers - possibly Yeoman of the Guard, but could easily have been from his own regiment. Aston was deeply unpopular with the civilian population of Oxford, he had to have a bodyguard of halberdiers as he had a close call with an Oxford man who knocked Aston's footman's teeth out and took a sword blow to the ribs from the same man. A few days later Aston was placed under house arrest for hitting Oxford's mayor. Red coats it is! Aston was a colourful character: learnt his soldiering on the continent (Polish-Swedish War, he fought ...

The famous engraving of the order of battle at Naseby is generally known as Streeter's map. In fact that is how I refer to it throughout this blog. Eagle eyed amongst you will notice that there are two versions of the plan of Naseby, one with a portrait of the Fairfax top right, and one without. The Royal Collection, and the British Museum both have a copy with Fairfax on and attribute these to Streeter. Robert Streeter, sometimes Streater, 1624-80 (or 1621-79 depending upon your source material) was a painter and etcher. Widely known and celebrated he was mentioned by Pepys in his diaries. This is where Sprigge comes in: the plan is sometimes attributed to Joshua Sprigge as the illustration appeared in  his book  "Anglia rediviva: England's recovery: being the history of the motions, actions and successes of the army under the immediate conduct of His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax, Captain-General of all the Parliament's forces in England". Sprigge wrote...