Not too long ago, it occurred to me that many of the skirmishes and battles of the Civil War occurred in the vicinity of rural churches. Perhaps the best-known example is the Dunker Church that figured predominantly in the Battle of Antietam. It also struck me that a number of Civil War confrontations were actually named after nearby churches, for example, the Battle at Salem Church.

With this inspiration, I thought it might be time to add a rural church to my wargames table. A survey of the fine ready-made churches available in 25/28 mm scale from wargame suppliers convinced me to try my hand at something simpler and less expensive.

My criteria for a church included:

• Low cost, as I'm not a wealthy hobbyist
• Simplicity, as befitting a poor but devout rural church
• Small "footprint," so that not much of the table would be used up
• Hollow, so that troops and equipment could be placed inside
• Removable roof, to get inside

Not surprisingly, I also surveyed my local hobby shops to see what churches were available from HO model train suppliers. There I found a rather nice Town Church distributed by LifeLike Trains. It seemed as if the kit could be easily constructed as a small hollow church with a removable roof. And, fortunately for me, the kit was on sale for less than six dollars!

I decided to make several modifications during the construction of the church kit.

To reduce the prominence of the steeple, I left out the section which houses the bell.
To reduce the footprint, I left off the lean-to section at the rear of the church
As I wanted two entries, I cut a new doorway into the back wall
To reduce the "gaudiness" of the church, I replaced the "stained glass" paper windows with plain blue paper. I also spray painted the walls and all the trim flat white. To highlight the shingle details on the roof sections I "dry brushed" them with more flat white paint
Finally, I joined the two halves of the main roof together and added braces so that the entire roof could be easily removed for access to the interior

AFTER THE BATTLE, POSITION OF THE CONFEDERATE BATTERIES IN FRONT OF DUNKER CHURCH--Battles and Leaders

So, there you have it, a church for your wargame table with an investment of less than ten dollars. You can judge the results for yourself from the photographs. My next project is a small graveyard to add interest to the scene. (As you can see, I'm from the "old school" and still use singly-based wargame figures. Using single-basing allows me to position the figures better on hill contours, along roads and in melee situations.)

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