Mine Entrance, scratchbuilt - Part 2 of 2

Although not generally well known the use of mine warfare was fairly common throughout the medieval and 17th century English Civil War (ECW) periods. During the medieval period Rochester, Dover and Bungay castles were all attacked using mines.

Throughout the ECW mines were used at the sieges of the castles at Harwardine, Sherborne, Goodrich, Wardour and Pontefract. Mines were also used against the city walls of York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Lichfield cathedral to name ones I'm aware of. In fact the first known use of explosive mine in England took place at the siege of Lichfield in 1643 by Prince Rupert.

Also of interest are the mine and countermines created at the 1546–1547 siege of St. Andrew's castle in Scotland. These are particularly impressive, you can watch people walk above you through a grill in the pavement as you stand in the original mine entrance.

As with the sap in a previous post [Part 1 here] the base for this model is a CD with 20mm thick extruded Styrofoam glued onto it to build up the groundwork.

The trenches were cut out with a craft knife and lined with horizontal coffee stirrers and vertical barbeque sticks. Gaps in the foam were smoothed over using DAS white modelling clay. I've no idea if it is any different from the terracotta version apart from the colour.

Entrance (hidden) from the enemies point of view

For the entrance supports I used dowel whittled to give the impression that it had been rough hewn from timber. The entrance for the mine with downward facing coffee stirrers facing diagonal downwards, which looking at the images again you can't actually see in the photos.

I'm still in two minds as to whether I should add a blanket/screen to the mine entrance. I'm not sure if this was simply to keep out the rain or had another practical reason.

The figure is from Wargames Foundry.