Having used the last of my 3mm plastic offcut sheets under the Moriah-Carey chapel and the ex Market Tavern, and with a new batch on delivery, I didn't expect to be able to complete the "Tudor Court" collection of half timbered buildings until it came.  However, having had a furtle through the stuff in my spare room I discovered an unopened pack of art boards from when I used to go to the village art group.  I used to buy them in bulk, daub some local scenes, or nice trains on them and at the annual art group exhibition and sale, usually offload a few.  Not particularly lucrative but it's nice when someone likes your work enough to part with moolah for it, and it also raised funds for the art group.  Anyway when I checked their dimensions they were 20cm by 30cm, exactly the space needed to fill the corner.  And, as art boards are made to accept water colour, I figured it should be shed proof, unlike normal cardboard or certain foam or fibreboards.  So, thanks to my previous bulk purchase of art boards I was able to finish off the Tudor Courtyard.

The Tudor Courtyard is a small enclave of half-timbered buildings which survived the blitz and after the war, became the core of the new "conservation area".  As tends to be the way with these pockets of attractive buildings, the half timbered cottages have become office space for solicitors and accountants, with one becoming a trendy "Bistro" (in other words one of the buildings is designed to take interior lighting whilst the other two are solid plaster).  It is blocked off from Carey St by paving so is a pedestrian zone.  It backs onto the row of 19th Century terraced housing and the two remaining prefabs which are due to be demolished to make way for the Fagg End estate, phase 2.  The conservation area will be separated from the encroaching late 60s Council semis by an area of open space and planting, avoiding an unfortunate clash of 1960s concrete and 1360s wood and stone.



View down Carey Street to the Tudor Court.  The half-timbered cottage in front is an SD Mouldings plaster cast model bought for a previous plan, and repainted terracotta to simulate clay brick or sandstone rather than "Cotswold" rusty limestone.  To the right of the cottage, now a solicitors office, is the Georgian low relief Bachmann accountant's office.



Slightly wider angle view showing a Hornby Skaledale cottage on the left, which hides another SD Mouldings plaster cottage.  All have been repainted into a more West Midlands appropriate terracotta brown-red.

The Tudor buildings will be separated from the now disused, soon to be redeveloped terrace on the left by a narrow street.  The "Skaledale" cottage in the foreground will be turned through 90 degrees to show the half-timbered gable facade to the front, and will be called the "Bistro Tango".  The gap in the retaining wall will be filled when the steps down to the track are delivered and installed, and the backscene will be replaced.  Still to complete, more people and working street and interior lights as appropriate.

Why "Bistro Tango"?  A sort of soundy-liky tribute to Denmark's best ever Eurovision entry of course. (Jerusalem 1979, Tommy Seebach "Disco Tango")