Community Atlas and Challenge - Sir Lionel Poncegraf's Manor house

Here is the very beginning of my entry into the challenge for June. It is the ground floor plan of Sir Lionel Poncegraf's Manor house, on Fisher Island in the Forlorn Archipelago, in the Basher Bay region. It will be done mainly in the Naomi vanDoren Style (CA113, Annual 10, 2016) - spelled incorrectly as Noami in the Symbols Dungeon Folder, in case someone gets confused.
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  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Hmmm....

    Can see the competition is going to be quite fierce! :D
  • 1 month later
  • I have changed the style to basically DD3. Here is my latest offering - not much perhaps, but, boy, did I have heaps of false starts!
    Hope to finish in time for the competition - would be lovely if Remy could give us an extra week.
  • An update. Hope to finish the stables and dovecote before bed, then environs tomorrow. Any critique very welcome.
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    It needs Jakes and Bathing house.

    Also perhaps a well or two in the courtyard??

    and it looks like the only way for horses to get to the road is through the kitchen?? :-)

    and maybe stairs leading down into the cellar where items needing cool temps, meats and ale might be stored?
  • The servants have their toilet and bathroom there, as does the Blacksmith. the Lord of the manor and his family have theirs upstairs. There will be a gate in the wall beside the stable for the horses so that they don't muddy the kitchen! ;)
    I did forget the stairs to the cellar though - thanks for that. And also the well. Good thinking, 99!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    This is just a silly thing, but in the days when those very large rugs were used to 'carpet' a whole room in Victorian houses in the UK, there was usually a border around them where the wall furnishings like cabinets and such like stood on the bare floorboards. These large rugs were very expensive (usually hand made and shipped in from India), and it is unlikely that even a gentleman would have purchased one large enough to go wall to wall in a drawing room of that size - never mind have a nasty hole cut in it for the fireplace.

    I'm just sort of explaining why to me it looks all wrong ;) I would probably go for a wooden floor and place the rug centrally, like you have already done in the Library.

    Other than that - a really great map :)
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    I have seen here in the "colonies" where during the early period painted canvas was used to mimic an expensive carpet.

    And on consideration, the Great Hall floor with the mixture of tile and carpet seems a little much, unless of course Sir Lionel is a fop and is trying to impress his neighbors!! :-)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Maybe natural stone flagstones instead of tiles in the Great Hall?
  • Not on your nellie! Sir Lionel is a great one for luxury - just read the blurb on the description of this lovely man.

    "Sir Lionel comes from a fairly newly established landed family, with his grandfather being granted this manorial fief by the Duke of Basher City. He is a pompous but good-natured man, and genuinely cares about the amount of money his fief makes, the luxuries he can extort from his ungrateful peasants, and the number of women he can seduce, despite being married to a distant kinswoman of the reigning Duke of Basher City.
    Needless to say, the gallows sees a lot of use, and the ‘natives are restless’."

    Just the type of person we all aim to be - hehehe
  • A further update. I did consider Sue's advice about the floor, and compromised on a better pattern floor (I think). Flagstones are just SO gauche! Not for Sir Lionel at all.
    I need ideas for the back courtyard, apart from tracks which I will do next.
    The surrounds outside the lawn area are still to come. But ideas and critique please. Jerry already drew my attention to some oversights. (stairs and a well)
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Another thing I've just noticed is that the access to the Great Hall from the front door is through the butler's pantry. Here's a slightly weird idea...

    Just because there are stairs to the upper floor in the entrance, doesn't mean there has to be a solid wall between the entrance and the Great Hall. You could just have a transverse balcony linking the single storey rooms of either wing at the top of those stairs, supported by a double row of Corinthian columns, through which the two storey Great Hall is visible from the two storey entrance?

    Its a little untidy as designs go, but it would make more sense of the access to the Great Hall - also make the Great Hall more impressive.
  • Sorry Sue, the access is via the front door, into the entrance, then the doors underneath the stairs - not so visible on this scale, but they are there (look like a grey line on top of stairs symbol). I think in a better scale it will look more obvious, but there is a trade off between detail and general impression - and I favour the former in buildings, so you need the 3000x3000 pixel size, not the 1000x1000 size which this is.
    The 1st Floor will have the whole of the floor space - the Great Hall will only be 1 storey. Sir Lionel wanted a ballroom on the 1st storey, and his father-in-law refused to cough up more dosh to make it a three storey manor house. Ungrateful man - he should have been eternally grateful Sir Lionel took his daughter off his hands, and into his oh so loving one's.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Hmmm....

    Freshly aware that I can't actually see any of the smaller detail, I might suggest that a house that size would have a much larger vegetable plot - be more or less self sufficient as far as carrots and beans and peas go? Also, where is the shi… the mucking out pile? There would be tons of 'farmyard manure' up for grabs - a precious commodity in a time and place where there aren't any artificial chemical fertilizers?

    I might also make quite a lot of room for a pen of small livestock - ducks, geese, poultry... a pig pen? Easier to just nip out the back door and grab the raw materials for a nice suckling pig - and of course the obligatory apple tree. Can't have suckling pig without an apple in its jaws! there would have to be a sort of discrete outhouse as far from the main building as possible for the slaughtering and basic butchering. A tool shed (on a mansion scale). A cart park? (and I'm not talking about shopping trolleys!), or a coach house? I assume that even the rotten chauvinist pig would be obliged to keep at least one half decent coach to keep up appearances. Its always easier to pick up new victi… guests if you've got a nice fancy coach - headless/vampire driver optional....

    I think you might wish you'd made the yard a bit bigger! LOL!
  • There is a coach and sulky in the stables; I will certainly take up your other suggestions, and add a nice formal garden at the back too. And don't give me too many ideas about headless vampires, or we will start getting onto US poltics again!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    ROFL!

    I told you I try not to make comments about other people's governments - but I can certainly laugh at the things you say! LOL!
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    There is enough room between the dovecote and the forge for a nice flogging post just to keep morale up .. .. ..
  • Love that suggestion, Jerry - consider it done.
  • 7 days later
  • Obviously, this is no longer a Challenge piece, but I do want in the Atlas anyway. apart from some labelling (though perhaps even this is not necessary), the thing is finished... barring critique from you guys, which i welcome.
    the second floor will have a ballroom in addition to seperate Lady and Lord wings; the cellars will not only contain kitchen and wine storage, but a separate area for Sir Lionel to both entertain the ladies, and question those ladies' husbands.
    The first map is with roof on, the second where a mighty wind has blown it off! :D
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Looks like you managed to fill in all that space you were so worried about :P

    Great finish! :)
  • Going to add an armoury in the Library area, and a dog kennel(s) for the hunting houonds near the blacksmith, as well as a drying shed for game and poultry. Flogging post(s) and stocks will be set up near the Church (where else) when I get to doing them.

    Very open to suggestions for the floor above, in addition (instead of even) to the comments I made above. Make this villian YOUR villain. Be part of his sadistic ways. BTW, he is blonde, and has a funny way of moving his lips. MAKE PONCEGRAF GREAT AGAIN, folks, we can do it!!
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    I take it that the first "visitor" to the flogging post will be his barber???

    Is there a stair down to the cellars in the kitchen area? The Pantry seems small to hold all the foodstuffs that the LORD would want on his table?

    Wouldn't all the gold (at least gilded) plate and crystal (ok, the coke bottles) be stored in the Butler's Pantry and if so, would there really be a door into the foyer? Perhaps a wall across the northern part bedtween the two doors with a lockable door into the pantry itself? And shouldn't the coat of arms include a "Bigly" P in the Heraldry?

    No carriage house?? I can't see P riding on his paltrey to his neighbors in the rain or snow.

    (you may have to increase the size of the manor house to fit in all the good stuff!! :-)
  • The carriage is in the Stable block, there is a stair down to the cellar (beside the latrine well) and the butler's pantry will be redone - thanks for that suggestion. I* will mark the stairs with an 'S', and the nightsoil well with a small label. Perhaps i will put 'coach' on the coach.

    And what a low act to put his barber in the firing (flogging) line! Really, Jerry. :D
  • GThielGThiel Surveyor
    Ah, thought those were dog carts in the stables (size is too small compared to size of his steeds.)

    I don't see the stairs or the latrine well for that matter.

    What is the weather like for the manor? if that is the well I see north of the kitchen buttery, it must be really cold to try to get water from it during the winter.

    And with what I see of our very own "P" doing at the Nato Summit this morning, I am wishing his barber would practice his surgery skills and cut his throat. God he is a despicable little baby who can only scream ME! ME! ME!
  • The island in the Forlorn archipelago is just south of 40 degrees south (like Tasmania), and being an island, there is little or no snow on the coasts, with only the occasional winter days below freezing, and never during the day. (I know, cos I live in such a place, right on 40 degrees latitude 40). I will make the 2 carriages larger. I agree that at the size of the image posted it is hard to see the detail. Bear in mind that each square is 5 metres. The building is really very big, about 100 metres (330 feet) long.
  • Is there going to be a level 2?
    Cant find where Sir Lionel Poncegraf sleeps.
    If he isnt sleeping with the servants. ;)
  • Grimmric, there is indeed going to be a second level - i have outlined what will be in it above.
    Here is what I hope will be the final version of the ground floor.
  • I thought so.
    But i just felt like i had to mention it ;)
    Its an amazing map.
    When its done, please post it without the grid so we can enjoy all the details more.
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