Through the Ages

We have a number of new items in the Small Scale Scenery range today; they span almost a millennia from the Iron Age to the early middle-ages.

First up is this very flexible 25-piece set of roundhouses and other huts. There’s a mix of styles and sizes, mostly roundhouses but also including rectangular and oval structures. It also includes a Crannog, a small Celtic settlement which would be built on an artificial island in a lake. Although we’ve labelled them as a Dark Age village, the set would be eminently usable in other settings, for example the roundhouses would make a great African tribal settlement.

Largest of all is this one-piece resin village. It consists of a number of roundhouses along with small store huts and a central chieftain’s house, surrounded by a stone wall.

This odd looking structure is a Broch. They were built in the first centuries BC and AD in Scotland and surrounding islands – estimates for the number built vary between 100 and almost 600. Although they look like fortifications, they seem to have held a small village under one roof and their exact use is shrouded in some mystery.

Finally for this week, and dating from the 9th to 12th centuries AD, a number of tall Round Towers were built in Ireland. Again their purpose seems muddled – their Irish name, Cloigtheach, means ‘Bell Tower’, so they could simply have been belfries. But they’re also known colloquially as Priest Towers, and it has been speculated that they were used as refuges for the clergy from pillaging Vikings.

SSS-8139 – Dark Age Walled Village – £2.50
SSS-8140 – Dark Age Roundhouses – £5.50
SSS-8141 – Broch – £0.50
SSS-8142 – Priest Towers (x3) – £1.50