Battle of Ligny 1815 - Scratch Built Models by Chris Dodson (Hobby Post)

In February 2021 I was fortunate enough to acquire Chris Dodson's wonderful collection of scratch built farms, mills, inns and cottages for both Quatre Bras & Ligny. This blog post covers the Ligny items. Quatre Bras follows.

Chris originally built the scenery for a refight of the battles in 1/72 scale on his sand table. So almost a moving diorama if you like. You can still see his original action photos on Bennos forum.

The buildings are mainly made of caulk covered card with plastic roofing. I think Chris did a great job of gathering all the disparate sources available to make these recreations as realistic as possible.

I'll be using the buildings for wargaming - both Ligny & QB scenarios as well as other more generic Napoleonic and WW2 games.

So for my needs I had to permanently re-assemble and base the items. The bases were mainly 3mm MDF. Below you can see them after I have completed this work.

I have added some removable trees, carts, logs etc... as "dressing" for a few of the photos but have left things fairly basic so that I can adapt as required for each scenario.

There are also some 1/72 plastic troops shown for sizing painted by Simon Bennison of Painted Napoleonic Armies.

Ferme d'en Haut - Ligny Village

Chateau de Looz - Ligny Village

 Ferme d'en Bas - Ligny Village

Saint-Amand Church

Chris made walls to surround this church which I have replaced with a hedge as I needed to expand the plot size to accommodate my troops on 40mm square bases.

I made some moveable grave stones so that the churchyard can be depicted both before battle and filled with troops.

Potiaux Church (Originally used as Plancenoit Church)

Ligny Church

Original walls replaced with some resin ones I had.

Fleurus Windmill

 Roadside Chapels

Timber Framed Buildings

Not all buildings in the Ligny area at this time had white washed walls and gray tile roofing.

Village Buildings #1

Village Buildings #2

Other Bits & Pieces

To facilitate damage as the battle progressed Chris made many roofing sections detachable with both complete and ruined versions.

I have not used the ruined versions as yet at least and have them together with quite a few other bits & pieces including bridges for future projects.

Grand Pierpont Farm - Quatre Bras

I decided to use some of the stand alone buildings Chris made for Ligny to build my own representation of Grand Pierpont Farm.

This farm was on the extreme south western corner of the Quatre Bras battlefield and is now a Golf Club.

Most of the buildings are Chris' Ligny items without modification from me apart from the two red brick components.

You can see more photos of Grand Pierpont and many more Quatre Bras buildings in my next blog post here: Quatre Bras

 To see more 1/72 scale Waterloo Campaign buildings see here: Nap Buildings

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For appropriate figures in this scale you can view the 1/72 Scale Napoleonic section of my webstore here: Napoleonic 1/72 scale sets

You can view my other 1/72 scale Napoleonic blog articles here: Napoleonic 1/72 scale blog articles

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Thanks for taking an interest.

Rupert - Drum & Flag