Return to Edgcote

It's five years on now since the Edgcote 550 project which produced a book, lectures, a conference and a battlefield model and game. The model did the shows round for 2019 and then was put away, partly because it was no longer the anniversary and partly because of COVID. The figures for the model were jointly painted by me & Phil, although Phil did the basing, developed the "Hail Caesar" variant used for the game and built the display board. Figures were provided to the Society through a contact Mike Ingram had at Wargames Foundry. Flags were researched by Phil and the much lamented Graham Fordham and produced using a technique Graham had recently developed for printing flags on to real material. Funnily enough once I delivered my batch of figures I had little to do with the final product except to take part in the odd playtest.

Even more curiously, now I look back, I spent very little time with the model at shows. We were mostly a two man team so I'd run the book stall part of the stand and Phil would run the game and talk about the model. Funnily enough when we were joined by extra team members very few wanted to do the book selling and trying helmets on small children bit of the stand and preferred to play with the figures. 

Robin of Redesdale's host

Well I thought I might change that this year. The Society hasn't put out 28mm figures since the return from lockdown so why not revisit the Edgcote stuff? I'd need to replace the baseboards with something simpler (they are much to bulky for easy transport and we put up with it for a year, but no more), but all the figures were done. I just needed to retrieve them.

Phil was in possession of the all of the model kit and when he had his stroke and we cleared the house out it all got shifted along with all his other possessions to a lock up unit. It was time to go and get them. And, incidentally, go and get Phil's wargame armies for him. He has found the last few years hard. Painting and modelling is difficult with only one arm and whilst he's produced a DBA army, the figures he wants to play with are in that lock up. I put aside a day to go and hopefully find the Edgcote kit and also reunite Phil with his collection.

There's a story to be told about this, but not now. We did find the Edgcote boxes and we did retrieve a decent number of Phil's armies. This is the boot of my car, half emptied during unloading Chez Steele. The back seat is full as well. There are more to get, so I'm looking forwards to another trip next week. The look of joy on Phil's face when I stacked the boxes in his lounge made the whole trip worthwhile.

One of the problems we had when looking for the relevant figures is that when Phil had his stroke he was part way through, he says, a major sort out and re-boxing exercise. Consequently large numbers of figures were out on every flat surface in his house. Secondly, Phil does not label boxes and rarely marks the underside of bases. Even that label on the red box in the picture isn't a label. There was a degree of opening and closing boxes before finding what we, or rather I, needed. Even then it was a bit mixed up. No worries, says Phil, you can sort them out based on the heraldry.

Well, yes. Assuming I could work out what the heraldry was for the various units in the boxes all of which was researched especially for the project and so might not be the flags you expect to see...

In the end once I'd got the toys back to Shedquarters the only way I could sort stuff out was by looking at blog posts Phil had put up about the project and his pictures of various games. I've grouped the figures as he did for the various pictures on the page.

The Redesdale group at the top of the blog were fairly easy to put together, but it was then I started to have some issues. I couldn't identify the flag that purports to be Robert Ogle's. It's the white one centre right, with a red bar across it. The motifs are popinjays. They should be crescents. That coat of arms belongs to the Lumley family*, and I don't think either they or the Ogles were at the battle. Redesdale is also standing under the standard of the Conyers, rather giving his identity away.

I also encountered a problem that affects most if not all of the flags. The technology when this project was done was untested for longevity. No reason to think it would have problems, I guess, and it might be down to storage in slightly damp conditions. Alas rust has bled through the flagpoles quite badly, and the ink has also bled on the flags and become indistinct. The weave is also even more prominent than I recall it, and gives the banners a look of being painted on sacking. Flippity-flip. Looks like a simple project just got more complicated. Not only are some of the flags wrong, but all of them are worse for wear and need replacing. With Graham F no longer with us that'll mean paper not cloth.

Sir William Herbert on horseback

This is William Herbert's mounted contingent, with my prototype casualty record keeping markers supposed to represent the "Danse Macabre", or as the Welsh put it "Dawns o Bowls!". The figure in the centre is William Herbert. I painted the base figure and Phil was supposed to paint the heraldry on the surcoat and horse caparison as my painting skills are limited. Alas this hasn't been done, and with the figure fully based this is going to test my hand eye co-ordination to put right.

Sir William and friends on foot.

This is Herbert and the Welsh contingent on foot. Not many issues with this block, other than the noted issue with flags. Couldn't identify the green flag top left, which has "Morgan" pencilled on the base, and the colours may be transposed and it possibly should be a green lion on yellow background. The red bull flag is for the Harvardes, and should be a black bull. I'm not convinced now that the Harvardes were there and the reference could be to an illegitimate Herbert, given late medieval spelling and Englishmen writing down Welsh names. There's a slight issue that Phil has mixed the liveries of the different contingents that I painted to get a more pleasing grouping of figures. That's clearly wrong, and I have to think about whether I want to repaint the ones that are out of place or not.

Gates and Parr

These are the Gates and Parr reinforcements. The wheels are beginning to drop off generally now. The flag on the left is a Parr flag, but not the Parr at the battle. The flag on the right is Clapham, who shouldn't be with this group at all. The figures represent Gates and Parr seem to have black surcoats. They don't. It's the undercoating and they haven't been finished. Which is a bit of a nuisance.

Clapham, and the rabble from Northampton

This is the Clapham rebel reinforcement group. The central group have a replaced flag as the original one had broken off in the box. It gave me the chance to replace it with my revised Northampton Wild Rat banner - although I note I've got the rat the wrong way round, so I need to replace that one too. Again the prominent figures dressed in black are just undercoated. Ugh. I hate painting figures after they've been based.

Stafford of Southwicke

Ah. The man that ran away. Similar problems with mixed retinue figures as before. They're carrying a fetterlock badge banner, which is associated with York retinues, so they probably shouldn't have it. It's debatable what badge this Stafford used, as he's a minor branch and we don't know for sure if he laid claim to the Staffordshire knot. Why he's standing on a water fountain I don't know. It looks great, but is a bit incongruous when leading a charge. The banner he's got is wrong too - it's actually the Duke of Buckingham's, who was a Stafford, just not this one.

All in all there's more work here than I expected.

There's a pile of other figures still to sort, for example the Edwardian reinforcements and the Warwick baggage train and a figure of Lord Bergavenney for a reason I can't fathom yet. They are all lovely but they're not essential, so they can go back in the boxes for now.

And then there's this fellow:

This is a young Henry Tudor, acting as a squire to William Herbert, in Tudor Green and White, with a Red Dragon on his chest.

And having re-read all that it appears I've turned into a Heraldry Nazi.

* Thanks to Richard L of our local group for identifying this for me