I've been working on the table. I always begin with roads and watercourses, but in this case there is little of that to do. The North Carolina backcountry was mostly forest. One main road, the New Garden Road, ran through the middle of the field, meandering vaguely north as it went east. The only other road of consequence was the smaller Reedy Fork Road, which branched off to the north at the site of the Courthouse. Greene's army eventually retreated along this road in the actual battle. The field was crossed by two creeks running north to south -- Little Horsepen Cr. at the western edge and Hunting Cr. near the Courthouse. Neither creek was deep enough to affect the battle. They're on my table purely for decoration.
Much of Guilford Courthouse was fought in woods, a fact that helped the American army. But it also makes the field harder to model, given that the battle was fought in mid-March, when all of the hardwoods would have been bare of leaves. There were plenty of pines in the area, of course, but I've had to scrounge a bit to fill the table with bare trees and pines. The fields that had been cleared by local farmers also played a large role. The fields of Hoskins' farm, on the west, were the site of the first real engagement. Those further east, and in particular the area called by some "the vale", were important later in the battle. One participant in the battle noted that these muddy fields were "wrinkled". This gave me the idea of trying to represent them with suitably wrinkled, painted cloth. The results, I fear, were probably not worth the effort required.
Three small hills figured in the battle. One was heavily wooded and on the southern edge of the field.
The other hills were on the northern edge and created between them the low "vale". Greene positioned his regulars in his third line of defense on the hill east of the "vale".
There were a few structures on the battlefield. But as it turns out, we know almost nothing about how they appeared. At the west edge was Hoskins' house and farmstead, roughly where the British right wing's advance began. A log house claimed to be the original Hoskins House still stands (about two hours south of where I live). In fact, the house there was built several decades later, though it probably resembles the one that stood there in 1781. Here's my version of that farmstead (Hoskins is hurrying to get his animals inside, before they become breakfast for a famished British army):
Then there is the actual Guilford Courthouse. It has been modelled before (by the old Architectural Heritage company), along with the Hoskins House and kitchen. But it is important to note that those models were based purely on conjecture, using descriptions of similar structures that stood in the Carolinas at that time. No contemporary drawing or description exists of either the Courthouse or the original Hoskins House. All we really know about the Courthouse (from its excavated foundations) is the rough footprint of the building, that it had at least one chimney, and that it had a front porch. While the eponymous Courthouse was probably a one or one-and-a-half story affair -- since relatively few two-story structures existed in the backcountry -- I've portrayed it as two-story (just for appearance), simply adding a front porch to an existing model in my collection. There were a few other structures on the battlefield that are shown on maps drawn by participants in the fight. But they are neither named nor described. A stone jail near the Courthouse is mentioned in one account, so I added that next to my Courthouse. And I've stuck a couple of suitable-looking buildings in the spots noted on the maps:
Finally, here are a few views of (most of) the largely-completed field. First, looking east to west:
And west to east:
A few shots looking across the north-south axis:
Now it's time to get to work assembling the armies.
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