English Civil War inspiration from a Bottle of Ale!! - Batemans 'Dark Lord'

Inspiration for wargaming & painting little soldiers comes from many quarters, Airfix & nostalgia is a common theme on this blog then there are all the lovely books us modellers & wargamers 'need' , wargames magazines, wargames & model shows, likeminded bloggers, figure manufacturers websites etc etc. 

However todays inspiration has come from BEER....yes good old English Ale spotted in Morrisons this evening (they have carried on Safeways buying policy of stocking an excellent range of real ales) was a bottle of Batemans Dark Lord commemorating 'Black Tom' who as the label on the back of the bottle says fought at the Battle of Winceby. 

Hmmm intriguing now I know the main battles of the ECW and reasonably well up on the western campaign, but Winceby (in Lincolnshire) had passed me by. On googling  'Battle of Winceby'  I found it was a small engagement in 1643 involving 6,000 men with about 200 casualties on the royalist side & 20 lost in the parliamentary cause. The Dark Lord 'Black Tom' they refer too must of course be non other than Sir Thomas Fairfax who lead the second charge at the battle after Cromwell's horse had been shot from beneath him. Anyway no point in me copying and pasting loads of gumph on this as either you know all this and more already or just follow the links......and after consuming the contents of this rich malty dark ale I can't be bothered to type more!!

   

Anyway perhaps the inspiration is to paint a figure of Fairfax himself and Bicorne miniatures do one see below.....any others?? perhaps Warlord Games will do eventually, or convert a figure using the bottle label for inspiration...complete with red eyes!!