The rising cost of fuel and the greater congestion on the roads must have had something to do with it. More regional events seems a good idea. As long as they have changed what they used to do with me. Send me from the south to Carlisle and the same weekend send the Carlisle people to Southampton. ...

Ah, that's who you're with now!

Brendan's a really nice bloke, he'll look after you. Unlike me. I'm nassssty!

I'm sure I don't have a definitive list but I'll mention those I know of..: Conquest The Household Crusade Historia Normannis And best of all (cos they have me) , Dawn of Chivalry. I think most focus mostly on 12th/early 13th, we focus on mid-13th. Oh, and there's a whole bunch of hostpitaller group...

Hello from Hartlepool.

Strange I never knew about you guys before now. Perhaps we should organise the odd joint training session, forge some links.?

Maybe it was an early version of the Americanism "bathroom", which does not mean a room with a bath - simply a coy way of saying toilet without actually mentioning it.. I'd heard that Toilet was a Euphemism itself - from the French 'toilette' meaning dressing room, or somesuch. If what I ...

To be honest, I expected it to be more anachronistic - especially in terms of modern safety requirements for working on a building site. It did seem odd though that there was a mix of period footwear/legwear and modern steel-toecaps/trousers on site with no mention/explanation of it. Definitely enjo...

It 'feels' more 12c to me. so I guess its very early 13c - must have been done right after the sacking of Constantinople.

But I think the lack of detail in the mosaics makes it difficult to glean much from it at all.

Not as bad as I expected.. But there's still the big bugbear I have for this period.. Way too many in surcotes (and sometimes bits of plate) but without any mail! Sounds like it was way off the promotional hype though in terms of numbers.. I guess our curiosity of where they would get the numbers fr...

Shame you missed us at Sedgefield. Maybe you could catch us at Barnard Castle this weekend (sun + Mon)?

Ahh, makes sense with the cross now.. With the shield, its difficult to say really.. You don't often see (obviously non-knighlty) infantry with shields in period imagiary for that timeframe - and the few I have seen have sometimes had some decoration but I don't recall seeing any heraldic devices - ...

Damn fine effort, I'd say. My only comment (which I'm not totally sure of tbh) is the bits of heraldry you have.. I would have avoided any kind of 'charge' worn on the chest (they weren't massively common on the knights at that point) and just stuck with a field. btw, Good luck with Lewes.. Shame we...

Depends on period I suspect..

So, how long were spears in the period of this sub-forum?

Can I say, around 400 years?

Mark, that was terrible!

I'm just a bit bemused about who will be providing the large scale, brutally realistic reenactments and what their expectation is for large scale.

They were definately at NLHF last year - but I think I've seen them at ILHF before too. But I do remember that they generally have quite a small stall with limited stock - due to transport costs, I think.

Yes, bought from them several times (as have several others in our group) and I'd highly reccomend them.

(They usally attend one of the UK markets too)

That helps a lot, thank you.

There are many manorial records surviving, detailing work commitments and rents owed by the field workers. One of these from 1279 is quoted here: http://www.shsu.edu/his_ncp/Manor.html I found this really interesting. Although its not the kind of thing I'd usually look at. But I did struggle with m...

Ah, I probably can't help you then.

Period?

Why? Justin is a clown/Childrens entertainer. Would we expect his costumes to be anything other than a fancy-dress style comedy character.

Btw, I think he's great!

For late 13th, I'd stay away. The vast, vast majority of images and effigies indicate mail only. But in terms of transition, two things spring to mind. The shoulder attachment on wisby coat of plates, and ailettes (which are debatable whether they were viewed as armour at all) Other than that it's j...

oo, nice.

Surely they had new stuff back then?

It'll age by itself all to soon. We all do.

Depending how pointy they are, I would be wary of combat in them too. I fell backwards over a casualty once while wearing some. When you fall like that, you roll back, legs go up in the air, then fall back down heel first. In this case, spike first toward the casualties face. Luckily he was aware en...

I suspect the issue is only where re-enactors are mixed with entertainers(for want of a better word - but i'll have to add that non-accurate doesn't automatically mean entertaining) - on a couple of levels.. 1. The re-enactors provide the public with a sense of accuracy based on research, providing ...

Merlon. wrote:

Mark Griffin wrote:but yo ho ho and all that...

Ah but the pirates at Chatelherault went:-
"Oggy Oggy Oggy!Oi Oi Oi"

True that. I'm used to seeing inaccurate groups redeem themselves with entertaining displays.
I was certainly entertained by them!

Pirates weren't the only ones. There was the group including the Robert the Brus impersonator (knitted mail and all). Genuinely nice people and great with the public. But the costumes were totally made up, they described themselves as 11 - 12th century (for the position in the parade), and I had an ...

Having just done my first Scottish event at Chatelherault, there are defiantly some good Scottish mediaeval groups around. However, there also seems to be a strange element of non-historical reenactment there too (the pirates for example). I just got the impression that the historical element is str...