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Roman watchtower

Roman watchtower

After wrapping up my wee Roman army with my Roman cavalry unit last month I needed a bit of a change of pace. Designing and scratch building a Roman watchtower to go with my army seemed just the thing. 

Most models of Roman watchtowers you find online are based on stone examples like those found along Hadrian’s Wall or in southern Germany. I, however, wanted to build a tower more like those found along the Dutch part of the limes, the border of the Roman Empire. As stone is pretty hard to come by in this tiny flat country of ours, watchtowers were either made entirely out of timber or had a timber frame with inset wattle and daub sections. 

I particularly liked the look of the reconstructed watchtower at Vleuten-De Meern, with its dark timber frame and yellow wattle and daub. As you can see, my tower is quite heavily influenced by the Vleuten-De Meern watchtower, although I wasn’t too strict when it came to the exact dimensions.

The reconstructed watchtower at Vleuten-De Meern with gloomy Dutch sky.

When it comes to the construction, I think a picture is worth a thousand words: 

watchtower build 1

From left to right: The tower ‘body’ is made from corrugated cardboard. Polystyrene sheet is used for the base and balcony; 2. bamboo skewers are used to make the roof frame and support beams for the balcony; 3. triangles of thin, non-corrugated cardboard are glued on top of the roof frame.

Watchtower build 2

From left to right: 1. Overlapping strips of thin cardboard are glued to the roof. The strips are made to look like wooden shingles by cutting notches at regular 1 cm intervals and positioning the overlapping strips so that the notches are in a staggered pattern; 2. Wooden coffee stirrers (lovingly nicked by my wife from the cafeteria at her job) are used to line the edges of the wall, to delineate the first floor and to hide the seams of the roof. Strips of thin cardboard are used to make the smaller timber frames, doors and windows; 3. Coffee stirrers are used to add a railing to the balcony (later removed for ease of painting) and the wattle and daub sections of the walls are textured by dabbing on slightly watered-down wall filler/spackle with an old brush.

The tower was painted using acrylic crafts paint from a bargain store (Xenos, for you Dutch readers).

This cheap stuff doesn’t cover particularly well (the dark brown needed 3-4 coats), but sometimes that can work to your advantage. By applying only one heavy coat of ochre to the walls, the white of the underlying wall filler still shines through creating a nice weathered wattle and daub effect. I'm really quite proud how it turned out:

Roman watchtower
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