Thursday 28 May 2020

15mm Peasant Dwelling

I've started to get back into 15mm medieval wargaming, and I've been looking about for some rural medieval buildings that aren't castles, with very limited success. So I've decided to try making some.

This is a very small peasant hut, called a "grĂ¼benhaus" in German, but built in very similar fashion all over Europe, and indeed, the world. It was basically a wattle-and-daub thatched tent, and to give the occupants some head-room, it was built over a dugout pit, usually about two or three feet deep — hence the name.

Although this one is very small, and would probably be the hovel of a villein or serf, the same principle was used for considerably larger houses, especially where the soil was dry enough to dig into without oozing damp.




Here's the first test print done, and given a squirt of primer to take off the shine.

I shall have to give the thatch a bit more texture I think, even though I'm not a big fan of the sort of thatch modelling that looks like bundles of sticks rather than straw.




Okay, here's the second test print with a bit of thatch texture added. It's also been printed at a lower resolution than the first, to speed things up a bit.

As I suspected, my 0.4mm nozzle hasn't been able to fully render the texture in the model, but it's perceptibly more textured than the first try, and I think it will probably be good enough for my purpose.





It would be nice to be able to have nice shaggy thatch on my wargames terrain, but quite a bit can be achieved with paint, and in the end they're only wargaming models after all, not diorama pieces.


NOTE: the STL is now available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/medieval-peasant-dwelling/




This is a larger variant on the same theme, about twice the size of the little hovel in every dimension.

They would have been very dark and stuffy inside, as the only light would come from the open door and the smoke holes at the top of each gable. The peak of the roof would have been high enough to allow for a mezzanine floor for sleeping.

This sort of thing would have been a very common rural family home throughout Europe during the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, up until vertical framed buildings became the norm.


No comments:

Post a Comment