Charles I and the Isle of Wight

My brother and myself recently returned from the sunny Isle of Wight. One of the main historical attractions there is Carisbrooke Castle. The most famous resident of the castle was, of course Charles I. The onsite museum contains Civil War armour and more interestingly several personal possessions of King Charles I.The majority of the notes below are taken verbatim from the information panels at the castle

“Defeated in the English Civil War which had raged since 1642, King Charles I was under house arrest at Carisbrooke for 10 months in 1647-1648.

At first he had the freedom of the island but early in 1648 John Burley of Newport tried to free him, failed and was hanged. Afterwards Charles was confined to the castle. Still he could walk and play bowels on a green made for him."

View of Carisbrooke Castle from the gatehouse looking towards the motte. Charles’s bedroom was located in the central building behind the ten paneled window in the middle of the picture. The large glazed window replaced a much smaller one. The second attempt was from ruined buildings to the left

Aided by his page, Henry Firebrace, the king tried to escape twice more. In the first attempt he climbed through a window in his bedchamber but he got stuck in the bars."

King Charles slept here (although not in this bed)

Medieval fireplace, King Charles I's bedroom

“This room was the king’s bedroom during his first five months at the castle, from November 1647 to April 1648.

At first he was treated as a quest, but in January he became a prisoner, and guards were place on his bedroom doors. Charles attempted to escape from a small window in this room on the night of 20th March1648, assisted by his loyal servant Henry Firebrace.

There are many later additions here, but the king would have been familiar with the large medieval fireplace, and the medieval chapel window and squint (to the right of the bed).

The bed and chests are reproductions in the style of the 17th century. They have been installed to suggest the style of furniture brought here from Hampton Court in 1647.”

Ruined kitchen and bedroom block

Brother acting as money grabbing guard under the escape window

"The second attempt was made in this area, where kitchens and bedrooms had been built by George Carey 60years before. Charles tried to climb out of the window above... but he was betrayed by two guards. They had taken money to let him escape but then cruelly turned him in.”

On 29th November 1648 Charles was transferred across the Solent to Hurst Castle and then on to London for his trial and eventual execution 30th January 1649.

The isle wasn’t a happy place for the Stuart family.

Parliament was anxious that the children of King Charles could not be used any Royalist plot to restore the Monarchy. Princess Elizabeth and Henry Duke of Gloucester were moved to the Isle of Wight when their brother Charles II arrived in Scotland. It was determined that the Royal children should be imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. They arrived at Cowes on 13th August 1650.

Never blessed with strong health Elizabeth died, aged 14, on 8th September 1650 probably from pneumonia and was later buried in St. Thomas Church, Newport.

The church fell into disrepair and the princess’s grave was forgotten until 1793 when it was rediscovered by accident. When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made the Isle of Wight their family home they felt the final resting place of one of the forebears needed a decent memorial hence the sculptured monument that marks Princess Elizabeth’s final resting place.

18th Century nameplate

Sculpture by Carlo Marochetti
St. Thomas's Church in Newport, Isle of Wight

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Henry Duke of Gloucester was allowed to move to the Continent where he fought against the Spanish. Shortly after the Restoration he died from smallpox, 18th September 1660, aged 20.

TV Celebrity Manhandles My Miniatures

After a inside tip-off I was recommended to watch the recent History Cold Case programme where "Professor Sue Black and her team use forensic science to shed light on the past. They look at two skeletons discovered among 113 bodies in a mass grave outside York."

After 20 minutes into 'The York 113' episode, featuring a certain Dr. Xanthe Mallett, I was quite taken aback to recognise several miniatures I had painted for Warlord Games. Mine are the Covenanter infantry and dragoons (they're all the ones with the blue bonnets). Hopefully I will be able to detail more of these figures quite soon.

I believe the programme may only be available in the UK (i.e. to B.B.C. licence payers) and can only be viewed over the next few days. It's a interesting programme which indeed challenged a number of my pre-conceptions about this historic time period. 

Dr. Xanthe Mallett is now my favourite forensic anthropologist (if only for the pulp fiction name). Admittedly that's quite a narrow field of interest but she is definitely now my favourite television expert.

Montrose Irish, Warlord Games - Part 1

The Montrose Irish boxed set from Warlord Games contains four metal pike, four metal command and sixteen metal musket figures. I won’t repeat the history of the unit that these figures represent as that is all contained on the colour leaflet supplied with the box. And there’s more info readily available on the t’internet about James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose himself. I did notice from the notes that Montrose was actually associated with Newcastles Whitecoats during the war, which is a nice coincidence figure-wise.

The only instance of any Irish regulars serving in the midlands that I know of is that of soldiers that formed part of the Lord Loughborough’s garrison during the siege of Ashby de la Zouch castle in 1644.

I restricted the use of faux tartan to the blankets, although I think I still may have got carried away when it came to painting some the plaid. The leaflet in the box says that these soldiers wouldn’t have carried chocolate box style tartan. Naturally I followed this advice and chose instead to go for a shortbread tin style tartan look. Even then I had to tone down (well ok, completely repaint) a few of the patterns as some of the figures started to look like members of a flamboyant ‘Bay City Rollers’ tribute act.

It seems that for many miniature painters (that’s people who paint miniatures, not tiny painters) tartan is a dirty word and is too much of an effort to even attempt. However following this very useful guide I find painting a tartan effect relatively easy. The only trick or tip I believe is being able to paint in straight lines. I would not recommend using tins of shortbread as a colour reference (even though it may appear that I did). With the godsend that is ‘Google images’ it’s always easier to copy from a real image than trying to rely on just your imagination.

A number of these miniatures have been sculpted to represent war weary campaign soldiers with raggedy trousers and bare feet. A couple even are about to chuck a great big stone at the enemy. These are probably how a great deal of veteran Irish, Scottish and indeed English Royalist troops looked like towards the end of the wars. I’ve read an account that described how highlander soldiers (who you would imagine would have been highly distinctive) were only recognizable as such because they were the only ones who could cope with the squalid conditions whilst they were being held captive inside a cathedral.

As usual these metal figures from Warlord paint up very nicely. The majority of them have been painted with the distinctive white trousers associated with the Irish, an ‘interesting fact’ new to me. Using the excellent Peter Dennis box art as a guide, I painted the uniforms of the soldiers in various colours. There are at least four different shades of green/olive drab and a few with my special version of Hodden grey (IT ISN’T GREY!), made out of a secret blend of 11 shades and colours of acrylic paint, ok it’s actually only three different colours but it’s still a bugger to prepare.

I also adopted a simpler method of finishing the faces on a number of the figures as they appear to have a bit of a squint. Rather than painting the whites of the eye I simply used a technical pen to create the pupil. This is probably a more realistic approach as it avoids the startled ‘Blimey, I’ve just been given a wedgie!’ look.

All the miniatures are based individually as I intend to use these in the same way as highland Scottish figures, as a rabble or skirmish line. If I ever feel the need to use the figures in a larger group I’ll simply attach them using Blu-Tack to a normal 40 x 40mm base.

Part 2 of this topic will detail the four command figures (well, it will do after I've actually finished painting them).

The Lunt Roman Fort

The Lunt Roman Fort is a reconstructed first century wooden Roman fort located just outside Coventry, in the village of Baginton, Warwickshire. The fort has more or less remained the same since I first visited the site when I was a child back into the sunny 70's. The fort is probably best know for its distinctive bulging outline, unlike any other known Roman fort.


The fort is unusual as it makes the best use of the landscape utilising a high plateau with a steep bank sloping down to the river Sowe rather than the traditional Roman method of building in straight lines creating the usual playing card shape regardless of the location.

The site was discovered in the 1930's, excavated in the 1960's and reconstructed in the early 1970's.

Approach to fort.

Eastern Gateway entrance.

View of collapsed wall section.

View of gate from inside fort. 

The Royal Engineers reconstructed the Porta Principalis Sinistra (eastern gate) in September 1970. The design was based on examples from Trajan's Column in Rome and was consistent with the archaeological evidence for a double gate with no guard chambers. It was discovered from reconstruction that it would take ten men using a single pole with pulleys and guidelines to easily haul the individual sections into place. The gateway took three days to reconstruct. I imagine that experienced Roman military engineers could complete the same task somewhat quicker.

Model of fort within the granary/museum

Full size Cavalry reconstruction

Note the horse harness double phallic hangers visible just below the lower tip of the shield. This a copy from an original found on the site.

Gyrus

The reconstruction of the Gyrus was completed in 1977. Eighteen men from 31 Base Squadron working six hours a day took ten days to complete it. The large circular feature is unique in the Roman Empire. It is 107ft (34.06m) in diameter and has a double-gated, funnelled entrance. The archaeological evidence suggests this was a cavalry training ring.

The Lunt may have been a centre for breaking and training horses seized from the Iceni – or Celtic horse people. Since horses were in constant demand by the army, they would be welcome spoils of war. A large wooden post in the centre of the Gyrus could be used for weapons practice, learning to cut and stab with the gladius (the short Roman sword) or throw and thrust with the pilum (spear).

I believe the fort earthworks have been left to fall into disrepair on purpose as local historians wanted to study the rate at which the walls collapsed.

Official website for the Lunt Roman Fort

Virtual Tour

Raynalds Mansion, Much Wenlock

On a recent visit to Much Wenlock in sunny Shropshire I saw this building, Raynalds Mansion, on the High Street. Although one of the window frame carries the names of 'John and Mary Raynalds 1682' as far as I can find out the core of the building is actually a lot older. The building opposite for instance, The Talbot Inn, dates from 1360. I was particularly impressed by the purely decorative geometric patterns created by the wood work.

If I ever get the time I'd like to attempt to make a scale model of this building. I'm sure it would make an eye-catching addition to my meagre collection.

Preacher - Warlords Games

This is the Preacher miniature from the Fire and Brimstone set by Warlord Games.

"Heathen hordes, I dare thy to try and pull my finger!" 

The figure nicely portrays a Puritan preacher such as Richard Baxter. Puritans became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War. Any Puritan's wardrobe would contain a limited colour palette to say the least. I found it quite difficult to paint it to look interesting using just black, white and various shades of grey.

As the majority of my toy soldiers are Royalist, for now at least, I'll stick him in with the Covenanters to give them some moral support. I like to think that he is reading either Psalm 68:21 if his side is winning or Isaiah 2:4 if they are losing and about to be captured.

Regular readers will be pleased to note that my photography skills are as bad as ever. Apologies for their standard (as usual).

Anthony Clarke Booth VC, St Michael's Church, Brierley Hill.

On Sunday, in what turned out to be another lazy bank holiday afternoon (waiting for our mom to cook Sunday lunch) my brother suggested that we go and look for the grave of a VC recipient, that of Anthony Clarke Booth. He won his Victoria Cross in extraordinary circumstances at the Battle of Intombe.

We knew that Booth was buried somewhere within the grounds of St Michael's Church, Brierley Hill. Anyone who has been privileged to see a  grave of a WWI or WWII recipient of a VC in Belgium or France will know that they are easily recognisable as the iconic symbolic cross is engraved into the headstone. However we thought, correctly as it turned out, that the gravestone wouldn't follow this pattern introduced by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. After 15 minutes of carefully (with hindsight obviously not that carefully) searching we eventually managed to locate his final resting place.

Edit:

After a comment left on this post I released that I had shown the wrong grave! I had in fact detailed the grave of Booth's sons. Typically a grave will hold three people and the rest of his family are buried in a nearby plot. As we were in the area and the weather was fine we went for another look for the grave. The plot was actually pointed out to us by a passing police officer.

Booth VC grave detail

St Michael's Churchyard, Brierley Hill

Booth's grave is in the foreground

Aged 32 this sergeant from Carrington, Nottingham in the 80th Regiment of Foot  (later the South Staffordshire Regiment) staged a remarkable fighting retreat that saved the lives of dozens of his comrades but also saw the social disgrace of his, so-called superior, officer.

The citation is as follows:
On the 12th March 1879 on the Intombe River, South Africa (Zulu War), during an attack by a very large number of the enemy, Colour Sergeant Booth rallied a few men on the south bank of the river and covered the retreat of 50 soldiers and others for a distance of three miles. Had it not been for the coolness displayed by Colour Sergeant Booth, not one man would have escaped.

A more detailed account of the incident Intombi can be found here

The London Gazette has him as a Colour Sergeant, but on the day of the Battle of Ntombe he was actually a Sergeant. His promotion came the following day to replace a Colour Sergeant killed in the action. The gazetting of his VC was delayed due to the fact the surviving officer from the action, Lt. Henry Hollingworth Harward, was court-martialled for cowardice. The trial commenced on 20 February 1880, and concluded on 27 February 1880. During the course of the trial, Booth's award appeared in the London Gazette on 24 February 1880. Harward was actually found not guilty but his career was over and he resigned his commission in May 1880.

Booth's Victoria Cross is displayed at the Museum of the Staffordshire Regiment in Whittingham, Staffordshire at the old regiment's barracks.

Below are photos of the grave of Booth's sons.

Grave of sons

Booth VC sons grave detail

St Michael's Churchyard, Brierley Hill

The grave of Booth's sons is in the foreground

Note that Booth's son, Harry Charles also served with the 80th regiment.