"La Haye Sainte colours" Topic

Hello
I would be grateful for any advice on the colour(s) which I should paint the woodwork (doors and window frames) on LHS. I have seen pictures of it painted gray and green.

I understand that the courtyard was most likely paved with cobblestones, but the model I have has bricks. I'm guessing that the bricks should be red, with lots of mud, but any suggestions gratefully received. Perhaps I should paint the bricks in the appropriate colour for cobblestones in that part of Belgium, but not sure what that would be.

QThank you

Well just off the internet I have many modernish pictures of Belgian cobbles (sad I know). Much depends on the time of day, rain or dry and sunny or grey skies. Grey with a touch of sand drybrushed and mud plus "dung" +++ would seem right to me.

As for the woodwork. No clues from contemporary prints I am afraid

The main gate and adjacent door are usually shown in natural wood strangely….and no black pitched line around the base on the walls back then?

If you google "pavé vieux", which is the French phrase meaning "old paving", you should get some usable images of what a paved road used to look like.

Thank you for your advice. Natural wood seems odd, but I assume that they must have varnished it, as it wouldn't otherwise last long in the Belgian climate.

Totally agree…….maybe brown paint? Maybe creosote???? Some kind of wood stain?

Many details changed in LHS, but minor ones. Most obvious is the Great barn did not extend so far west until rebuilt after the battle. More windows in the farmhouse roof. Loads of early photos on Internet…….

I feared you were going to ask wall colours. Natural red brick or whitewash…….that we have done to death and still no one is sure……

Actually with the right materials doors will many last years without some form of protections like creoste.

Here are two from 14thC England still extant. The Bradford-On-Avon Tithe Barn near where I grew up:

And Great Coxwell in Oxfordshire:

As you will see the doors are unpainted or treated and have become a grey with age.

This is the type of colour that untreated wood goes after a number of years exposed to the elements:

link

If you wanted a slightly lighter wood colour here's the Tithe Barn at Pilton in Somerset. It was rebuilt following a fire and reopened in 2005.

Wow. Thank you very much. I had no idea that untreated European timber could last so well.

The surface of untreated wood goes grey all too quickly due to UV and rain, within a year certainly.

Dark grey patchy……..Highlight/drybrush with a very light almost white. Not a trace of brown naturally, unless of course you saw into it or blow it apart!

The lintels over the doors in the top barn look right to me….bridges, doors, fences…..

Wow. Thank you very much. I had no idea that untreated European timber could last so well.

Kipling said in well in the poem "The Land"

"They spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees,
And planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees.
And when the spates of Autumn whirl the gravel-beds away
You can see their faithful fragments, iron-hard in iron clay."

Actually this was my office in Clarkenwell, on the edge of the City of London built in 1504. It was actually one of the more comfortable buildings I worked in during the summer because the thickness of the walls meant in was reasonably cool in a country with limited air conditioning (normally it was mainframe computer rooms and server farms that have a/c). In winter it suffered from drafts.

They spent a fortune to restore that area. That is not 1504 stone.

The local stone wears away, let alone woodwork.

I pay many hundreds a year for my FRCS, for a place I have not visited in several years (once I almost lived there) next to Inns of Courts in London.) A fortune to maintain/restore.

In Yorkshire the local limestone almost melts as you watch it in the rain……..add modern acid rain and……

Currently, York Minster is covered in scaffolding to the south, last year it was North…they are refacing everything. They have to……. It is fake…looks great tho'

What did hack me off what they did to Hgmt and their brand new roof tiles and bricks. Any UK Grade I listed building, that would never have been approved. Never.

It will get there in ten years time. Belgians do not care to fund such work, unless tourists attracted……..income generated……

Agreed. The Victorians did a lot of work on St.John's Gate. The interior was a mixture. Fortunately the plumbing was one change and it still looks cool.

Oh, no mistake, that whole area of London is just a joy to wander through…………and no tourists as no ne knows it is there. Acres of London that are not on any (most) guide book maps…….