An early church - 1

Having painted up a priest for the Romano-British, it's only fair to make him a church to lurk in when he's not exorting his countrymen to resist the Saxon invaders. It also gives those Saxon invaders a nice target for a lucrative looting spree...

I made a carcass out of half-inch foamcore offcuts and stuck them together with the hot glue gun. This makes a really rigid form on which to build. Two aisles will go either side, and the end will have a rounded apse - the signature features of early Christian churches in Britain. In this case I took the used stiff card tube from a roll of clingfilm and stiffened it further with a layer of thinner card. Once the glue had set I cut it into a half-round, as shown. It's a little over the height of a man in this scale, and will eventually have a conical roof.  

The walls will be made of stiff card cut to shape. At the moment I'm thinking in terms of Romanesque pantile roofs instead of thatch to make it more distinctive. Thatch is far easier to make, so I'm not really looking forward to it! The whole structure will be taller than the domestic buildings I made earlier so it'll dominate the settlement, although the tabletop footprint will be about the same.

~ Our house has sold at last, and as things stand this will be the last model I'll build here. I've many happy memories of building and gaming in my hobby room, and I hope the next place we live in will bring the same pleasure. ~