A Very British Civil War 1938: The Slebech Castle Cadet Corps

Lady Aisling Keir’s Slebech Castle Finishing School for Young Ladies was established on the Slebech estate in 1936, thanks to the patronage of her friends the Baron and Baroness de Loutson. Lady Aisling is a dispossessed Irish royalist, an ardent supporter of King Edward VIII and a supporter of de Loutson’s ‘English Mistery’ ideals. While a proud Irishwoman, she is a committed opponent of Celtic Nationalism.

Lady Aisling has found no difficulty in persuading similarly-minded reactionaries to send their daughters to her new boarding school. There, they learn essential life-skills for the Young Lady in 1938 Britain: endurance-marching, fieldcraft, mechanical engineering, horsewomanship and skill-at-arms.

All young ladies enrolled in the school are required to be members of the school Cadet Corps, which is elegantly uniformed in surplus uniforms of the former Imperial German Husaren-Regiment ‘von Lützen’, supplemented by long skirts, befitting of a young lady. The uniforms were supplied by the Baron de Loutson’s Bavarian cousin, the Freiherr von Lützen, who has also been most generous in providing arms, ammunition and additional training. The Cadet Corps includes a Hussar Squadron, a Foot-Hussar Company, an Armoured Troop and a Horse Artillery Troop, plus service-support elements such as Medical and Music Detachments.

Viscount Tenby, impressed by the high degree of training competence displayed by the Cadet Corps (or perhaps persuaded by the charms of Baroness de Loutson) consented to supply the Cadets with a small number of armoured reconnaissance vehicles, to provide close support to the cavalry.

The ‘English Mistery’, so enthusiastically supported by Baron and Baroness de Loutson, is a curious mix of fascism, ultra-Royalism, nostalgia and historical revisionism, which seeks a return to feudalism, an agrarian economy and breeding a ‘pure line’ of new Britons through arranged marriage and eugenics. Baron de Loutson’s contingent, of which the Cadets are a part, forms a large part of the Royalist forces in South Pembrokeshire.

These remarkable figures were sculpted by Paul Hicks for Hinterland Miniatures and painted by me.  The tankette is an Italian CV-33 by Empress Miniatures, while the armoured car is a Morris CS9 by Warlord Games.