I decided my next project for my ECW building collection would be a Gatehouse that I could use as a Tollgate or slot into the walls of a Medieval town or fortified manor. To this end I remembered a German Gatehouse that the great late great modelmaker Ian Weekley had built many years ago for Miniature Wargames I think and wanted something of a similar nature as I liked the way it looked, plus I had already made a version of the model myself a few times over the years.
With this in mind I cut down a Pringles tube and then made and assembled the conical roof as detailed in another post on my blog. I do have a nifty template that I made for the tiles on the conical roof that saves me a lot of time and effort cutting the tiles as I can cut the whole row of tiles to fit around the roof in one go.
With this done I turned my attention to the main part of the gatehouse and cut the preformed roof section to the desired length and shaped one end so that it fitted snugly to the round tower.Once that was done I was able to make the building itself from some foamboard making sure that the gable ends fitted well under the roof section.
At this stage I had the tower with the roof fixed on and a separate roof and house section that all needed to be finished and fitted together. To this end I painted the roof of the tower and left it to dry out thoroughly while I papered the thatch onto the gatehouse roof followed quickly by the paper stone onto the gatehouse. Finally I returned to the tower and papered the stone onto that but this time I used a different type of stone as I liked the idea that the tower and gatehouse were built at different points in time.
With all the components papered and dry I glued the roof onto the gatehouse and then glued to gatehouse to the tower ensuring that they lined up correctly. Next job was the gate itself and I took this off a paper model that I had bought and then I made a template for some arrow slits and printed off some of those to be glued in place where I wanted them.
At this point I used an acrylic wash over the conical roof to dull it down a little and then with the same wash I added some damp around the base of the structure and some drips under the arrow slits. Finally once dry I varnished the whole structure with clear acrylic matt varnish which really helps to protect and strengthen my model buildings.
Usually I base the buildings I make on hardboard or MDF but on this occasion I left it off the base so that I could decide later how this would link up to the road sections that I intend to make at some later date. But for now it will remain unbased and here is how it looks.
More pics on my blog: wargamesdesigns.com/ecw-blog
