Grand Manner Buildings

Right before Christmas I ordered four buildings from Grand Manner.  This is a UK company that makes really nice resin buildings and terrain pieces.  You can buy their buildings unpainted, as I did, or painted.  You have two painted options: wargame quality and museum quality.  I bought mine unpainted, because I couldn’t afford to buy them painted and because I enjoy painting them.

The four Grand Manner buildings from their Guilford Courthouse set
The four Grand Manner buildings from their Guilford Courthouse set

This picture shows all four of the buildings in the Guilford Courthouse set.  They were cheaper as a set, plus Grand Manner had them on sale leading into Christmas.  What really struck me about these from their add in the British gaming magazines and their Web site was the very obvious chinking between the logs.

The largest of the log cabins
The largest of the log cabins

Here is a close-up of the largest of the log cabins.  You can really see the chinking.  The roof is removable.  There is a removable attic floor as well.  The roofs should probably be brown bark shingles, but I decided to paint them as slate for some color variance.  The bases are textured enough that I could have painted them instead of flocking them, but I like the look of the flocking.  Note the small tufts of grass as well.  It was Sam’s idea to dribble some brown ink down the roof for added interest.

The porch of one of the buildings
The porch of one of the buildings

I really like this building.  The porch and porch roof are really nice.  I can imagine this building in a cowoby game, French and Indian War game, or a Pulp game with moonshiners.  I have the Beverly Hillbillies truck from Blue Moon that would look great next to this building.  The porch roof supports both snapped off during prep for painting, but they were nice clean breaks that were easily repaired.

Guildford Courthouse
Guildford Courthouse

This is the Guilford Courthouse building from which this set derives its name.  This picture doesn’t really do this building justice.  It  is really nice.  Note the combination of rock and brick on the chimney.  Very neat.

Interior of Guilford Courthouse
Interior of Guilford Courthouse

The shot depicts the interior, upper floor of the courthouse.  In both buildings with removable top floors, there is an open trap door.  In addition, a few small terrain bits, in this case a crate, are molded to the floor to provide a convenient handle to remove the floor.  This is a really nice feature of these buildings.  Normally I have to glue some other terrain bit to the floor myself.

The interiors of the buildings have detailed floors and fire places.  My only complaint with the kits is that I couldn’t really get a paint brush inside the buildings to paint this detail.  I had to settle for merely dry brushing over this detail so you can see it.

These are great buildings at a reasonable price (at least I thought the sale price was good).  They are easily prepared and are fun to paint.  Service was excellent too.  They shipped from England about 24 hours after I ordered them and arrived within a week.  I highly recommend these buildings.