This is a continuation of my Montpazier viewtopic.php?f=12&t=16794 project I'm working on for my private (family) server. A Bastide is a plannned, geometric and fortified town from the 12th and 13th century when the English Kings and the French both held territory in France. You can read more about bastides in Lecture Notes of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, #705-117 "Culture & History of Urban Planning" ©1999 by C.M.Gutjahr. It's a freely accessible pdf on http://artserve.anu.edu.au/htdocs/bycou ... Cities.pdf page 23.
My project will be a faithful (1m=1block scale) representation some of the bastides just before the hundred years war, fought during the middle of the 14th to the 15th century. I prefer this period due to the larger settlement before the Great Famine of 1310s, the Hundred Years War of 1330-1460 and the Black Plague outbreaks of the mid 13th century - not so many settlements (or people) then.
As in my previous project of this period the game part was to create bastides, town houses and farming gardens as specified by the actual designs and charters of the Kings.
Here's a transliteration of part of a typical Charter
You are allocated a plot within the town to build your own house, and you also had a ‘potager’ (an allotment-sized patch of land beneath the walls to grow fruit and veg), access to a field to cultivate crops or raise livestock and the right to go hunting and foraging in the woods beyond. Any surplus to your and your family's needs could be sold or bartered in the market, held every week in the central square.
Edward I of England was also Duke of Aquitane and built hundreds of basties, especially along the Garonne Valley in a checkerboard layout based on a standard module with house plots of 8m frontage and a depth of 24m. The streets 6m wide and the lanes at the rear of houses were 2m. Walls and fortified gates were mostly added after the start of the Hundred-Years War. The King would give you a plot in the town for your residence, supplying the stone and wood (see attachment in WorldEdit format).
The color scheme of the buildings was the three basic Gothic colors of red/yellow/blue. The ground floor was for commerce or trade, the upper floor was the family residence and servants, if any, were in the attic. The Market Square houses had colonnades in the frontage to shade the street and there were always several plots allocated to a church which was not built on the square.
Besides the above mentioned Monpazier, built in 1284, which I will detail in it's current state later on, there is the village of Molieres, built in 1284, a never completed bastide. Also planned but not well along are Beaumont en Perigod (Dordoge) 1272, Castilhonés 1259, Monflanquin 1269, and Villeréal 1267.
