Make Your Own Hiorne Tower

This is the first of the patterns I am making at Lucy Foxworth’s request for her Make A Castle Challenge. Time permitting, I will release three patterns: Hiorne Tower, a tower or castle with a round tower, and a fancy church. Lucy will be sharing her trick for making round towers during her video this week and I didn’t want to get ahead of her, so I decided this first pattern would have hexagonal or octagonal towers. After an internet search, I decided on both.

Hiorne Tower is a 50 foot tall building on the grounds of the park of Arundel Castle in West Sussex, England. The triangular structure consists of three octagonal corner turrets around a central hexagonal tower. It was built in 1797 by architect Francis Hiorne as he bid for the contract to rebuild the Duke of Norfolk’s nearby Arundel Castle. Though he did not get the contract (he died shortly thereafter) the tower was occupied until around 1960, and was featured in the 25th anniversary episode ‘Silver Nemesis’ of Doctor Who in 1988. It was restored in 1992.

As for Lucy’s Make A Castle Challenge, it is all about teaching you paper craft techniques to make a fun little castle or chateau of your very own. Every week starting Jan 3rd, Lucy has been releasing a video with a different castle-making topic. These include:

1. Introduction to castle and chateau-making – YouTube video released Jan 3rd
2. Cutting out cardboard castles by hand – YouTube video released Jan 4th
3. Cutting out cardboard castles with a Cricut – YouTube video released Jan 10th
4. What makes a Castle? Turrets and towers. How to make round turrets – next live YouTube video will be on Jan 17th at 8pm EST
5. How to make steeples and tower toppers
6. Ways to make a stone surface or other textures on your castles and chateaux
7. Patterns for castles
8. Fancy Churches

You can find Lucy’s previous videos on her YouTube Channel. Subscribe to get notifications of future videos. Joining her live is great as you can ask questions in real time. I picked up a design tip from her last week which I will be incorporating in all of my future designs.

Lucy runs her own blog with lots of free house patterns at Paper Glitter Glue. She also has a Facebook group Paper Houses & Paper Crafts hosted by Paperglitterglue. The Facebook group is a lot of fun. If you are on Facebook I suggest you join the group.

This Is How You Make Hiorne Tower

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Hiorne Tower Pattern Specific Materials

Favorite Materials Supply List

• Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice!
• Translucent Vellum or pictures to go in the windows.
• Glue – If using cardstock, I suggest Bearly Art Glue or Art Glitter Glue. For aluminum cans, I use Aleene’s The Ultimate Glue. For cardboard or chipboard houses, I like Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I put it in a bottle with a thin metal tip.
• If using chipboard or kraft colored cardboard, start with a base of either Liquitex white gesso or black gesso as primer.
• Decorative papers (optional – for cardboard.)
• Multi-surface satin finish acrylic paints or Ranger distress inks (for cardboard or cardstock.) Both the FolkArt and the Craftsmart paint brands work equally well. If you use distress inks, make sure they dry thoroughly before handling the pieces or you will have stained fingers. I speak from experience.
• Glitter Gel Pens. I love these for coloring in small details. The company also carries another set with metallic, neon and fluorescent gel pens.
• Tim Holtz Texture Paste or Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste to make brick or stone chimneys, walls or sidewalks. I actually prefer grit paste as it makes my stonework look rougher or more craggy than texture paste.
• Stencils to use with the texture or grit paste to make stone or brickwork. Be careful to buy or make stencils that fit the scale of your building. For brickwork I often use the Honey Bee Salvaged Bricks stencil or the Stretcher Bricks stencil I cut myself. For stonework I usually use either the Chimney Stone stencil I made myself, or the Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Set #28 Stencils. 
• Bone folder (optional, but strongly suggested) A bone folder helps you make sharp folds when you are using cardstock or cardboard. I have found it even helps with aluminum cans. I now use my bone folder to deepen score lines all the time.
• A Cutting Machine like a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore 
• A hand-held craft blade like an X-Acto knife or Cricut TrueControl Knife. I also have a hand-held knife called the Excel Knife. It is nice in that it uses the cheaper craft blades, but the blade doesn’t work its way loose like the blade in my X-Acto knife often does. You will also need a cutting mat or a glass media mat to cut on.
• Metal Edged Ruler with cork backing
• An Embossing Machine and folders.

Steps to Make Hiorne Tower

• Download the Hiorne Tower pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library
• Import the Hiorne Tower pattern into your design software
• Cut out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker. I show a way to texture and cut with your Cricut machine at the same time
• Make the central tower
• Make the three octagonal turrets
• Assemble the building
• Make base and decorate as desired

How To Make Hiorne Tower

Download the Hiorne Tower Pattern

Download the Hiorne Tower pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. Don’t forget to unzip it. The pattern is available in multiple formats – as a SVG (scalable vector graphics), DXF (drawing eXchange format), as a studio3 file for Silhouette, or as PDF file. I now include a 1″ square in with all of my SVG files. Scale the pattern so that the square is 1″ to make the building in the size it was designed. Of course the wonderful thing about SVG files is that you can easily scale them to make your building whatever size you would like.

Choose between whether you want a regular back with the light hole at the bottom of the building (this is the option I make below) or if you want to use the Putz Back and Bottom, where the light hole is in the back of the building.

Import the Hiorne Tower Pattern into Design Software

As of this blog post, a Cricut Design Space update in 2021 broke the attached score and draw lines. You will need to go through the pattern in Design Space and change the score and draw lines to Score and Draw and then attach them to their object. I am still designing so that if someday Design Space fixes their problem, score lines and drawings import as actual score lines and drawings attached to their object, though I have pretty much lost hope of that ever happening.

Here is a great tutorial from Jennifer Maker’s website on attaching score lines. I have started making all of my score lines red so that you can tell that they are intended to be score lines.

The yellow colored vellum pieces have paned draw lines that need to be attached. You attach the same way as you attach score lines, only changing the lines from cut to draw.

Using your Cricut Machine to Texture and Cut Your Building

The tower pieces of Hiorne Tower are too large to go through my BigShot to be embossed. Normally I would instead stencil on the stone work using a stonework stencil and grit paste, but I am short on time. I have also been looking for an opportunity to share a way to texture your buildings using your Cricut machine taught to me by reader LeAndra Miller. If you have a Cricut Maker, you can either use the debossing tip or the scoring stylus. If you have a Cricut Explore, you will need to use the scoring stylus. This only works if you are using cardstock. I used 80# textured solid core cardstock that I found at Joann’s. It is also available at Amazon. I have found that Kraftboard and cardboard tend to be too thick for this method to work well. I skipped directly from 80# cardstock to Kraftboard, however, without trying the various weights in between. If you have a favorite weight of cardstock, I would suggest trying it on a small sample and seeing if you like the results.

Refer to the PDF I included with the svg pattern for the name of each of the pieces you need to texture and cut out. I textured all three of the turrets, the crenulation and roofs of the turrets, and the front and back walls and the roof of the central tower. Make sure that each of the pieces are not tight against each other on your mats nor near the edges of the mat. One of my crenulations that was close to another on the mat ripped when cutting.

When LeAndra shared the following technique with me, I had no idea that there were patterns that you could use to deboss or score your building pieces included in Cricut Design Space. While the vast majority of the patterns require you to subscribe to Cricut Access, there are 46 free patterns included. You find these by going to Images > Design Elements > Patterns, and then clicking on the free button. The Cricut Access patterns include a brick pattern.

If you use one of these patterns, you will need to resize it to cover your largest piece. Since each of my turrets are 8.556 inches tall, and the widest piece is the crenulations at 8.158, I resized my pattern to be at least this tall and wide. I actually made mine slightly larger so the edge lines of the pattern wouldn’t show. Change your pattern piece from cut to Deboss (even if you are going to use score) and place your pattern over the pieces to see how they will look. Once you are happy with the pattern size, duplicate it and put it off to the side. You will end up duplicating it many more times and don’t want the size to change.

To texture each piece you will do the following: duplicate both the texture pattern and the piece you want to texture. From the duplicate of the piece you want to texture, detach, ungroup, and delete the scoring lines. Place the wall or roof piece UNDER the deboss pattern (you may have to use the arrange button at the top), highlight both pieces, and click “Slice”

Now pull your sliced pieces apart. Delete all except for the piece that looks like your roof or wall and says deboss.

Now take the original wall or roof piece with the score lines attached and the sliced deboss piece and use arrange and then center. Zoom in and double check these because depending on the slice results they may not be lined up exactly. At this point if you will be scoring instead of debossing, change the debossed piece from deboss to score. Select all the pieces and hit attach. Then just repeat with the next piece. Below you can see the attached debossed piece on the left and the attached score piece on the right.

When all of your pieces are finished, click Make It. If you are using the scoring stylus instead of the deboss tip with a Maker, remember to change your tool to scoring stylus. LeAndra also suggested to use more pressure.

Here is a picture of the same piece, using the debossing tip on the left and the scoring stylus on the right. You can see the debossing is deeper than the scoring, and I scored it twice. To do this, check the scoring BEFORE you unload your mat. If you do not feel like the indentations are deep enough, press the “C” button on your Cricut to have it go through a 2nd time. You can unload your mat after it finishes scoring for the 2nd time but before it starts to cut again. I tried debossing a 2nd time (though I was happy with the results after 1 pass) and it ripped my cardstock around the edges where it had previously cut. The other way you can have it deboss or score twice is back in Design Space , before you attach the debossed piece to the pattern piece, duplicate it. Now arrange and center the original wall or roof with both sliced deboss pieces, check to make sure they are aligned, and attach.

So the only real problem I have with the patterns in Design Space (both free and the ones available with Cricut Access), is that I feel that when you make them large enough to fit the walls of Hiorne Tower, they end up not being as detailed as I would like. Thus I made my own pattern. You will find it with the other files under the name stoneworkpattern.png. I don’t know why, but I could not import a svg file and have it slice, so I made a png of the file as that worked. To import it into Design Space, on the left of your canvas, press Upload >Upload Image, then browse for stoneworkpattern.png. On the Upload Image screen, choose Simple > Continue.

On the Background Remover Screen do not choose any of the options. Just press Apply & Continue. On the Select Upload Type page, choose Cut Image > Upload.

Add the uploaded image to your canvas. Remember to change it to Deboss! You can now use it like any of the Design Space patterns following the steps above.

Here is a picture of my Design Space canvas after I attached my stonework pattern to each of my turret, tower, crenulation and roof pieces.

After I debossed them and cut them out, I patted them lightly with distress ink.

Make the Central Tower

If you have used a debossed pattern like the one I made, with lots of straight lines, you may have trouble seeing the score lines. If so, cut your debossed items again out of scrap paper, this time turning off the debossing. Hold the scrap piece together with the debossed piece and use your bone folder and ruler to score and fold your debossed piece. I found I needed to do this for my turrets.

Above the top and middle arched windows there are score lines where there are decorative grooves in the real building. These can either be left scored or you can use a pen to color them in. I used a silvery-grey glitter pen to color mine.

For Hiorne Tower, the windows and doors are recessed, like they are in real life. Hence all except the horizontal trim will be glued onto the inside of the tower and turret pieces. Glue on the inside grey pieces first.

Glue the vellum and the door on the inside. You can glue the horizontal trim onto the tower front, but do not glue it onto the back.

Find the score lines and fold on them. Glue the Tower back to the Tower Front. You can now glue the horizontal trim onto the back. It will wrap around onto the front.

Check the fit of both the tower bottom insert piece, and tower roof piece, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Glue the pieces into the top and bottom of the center tower. I found it easiest to glue the roof in, and then the bottom insert. The roof should be glued in just below the cutouts for the top entry to the towers. Align the notch in the bottom insert with the door.

Make the Turrets

Each of the turrets are made the same way. Only 2 of them have a door on the bottom. Glue the grey trim piece inside the turret, then the red door inside that. And yes, Hiorne Tower actually has red doors, though you can make them any color you want.

Find the score lines and fold on them. Note the different score and fold vs placement lines in the diagram below. You do NOT fold on the placement lines.

Carefully glue the turret together. Note that the two sides that glue together are flat until about 1/2 inch from the top, where the top of the tower juts out to make the last hexagon point. Glue the black vellum into the inside of the turret.

Check the fit of the turret roof piece, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Glue the roof into the top to the turret.

Check the fit of the turret bottom insert, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Glue the bottom insert into the turret, aligning the notch with the door, and the flat side with the flat side of the turret.

Glue the crenulation around the top of the turret, using the placement line. Make the other two turrets the same way.

Assemble The Building

Glue each of the turrets onto the Center Tower, aligning the cutouts for light and the cutout with the black vellum at the top of the turrets with the corresponding cutouts in the Center Tower. None of the doors in the turrets should been seen from the front. I like to glue on the left and right turrets first, and then the back turret. You may need to reach up inside the hole in the bottom insert to press the walls together. I use a long wooden knitting needle, but anything will do.

Make Base and Decorate as Desired.

Enjoy making Hiorne Tower! I would love to see your finished design. Please share a photo of it with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com

MAKER’S GALLERY FOR HIORNE TOWER

FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR HIORNE TOWER

Download the Hiorne Tower Pattern

Get the password for the library with the free Hiorne Tower pattern and SVG/DXF/PDF/studio3 files here by filling out this form:

If you have any trouble subscribing please contact me at jackie@acottageintheforest.com

Save Hiorne Tower to Your Favorite Pinterest Board!