The Battle of Tewkesbury
Jul. 11th, 2010 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sally_mariaThis weekend was the annual Tewkesbury Medieval Festival. This is the third year running I've been, and I always have a good time. This year I went with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gayalondiel and her brother telepresent, and gaya's goth outfit was much admired. :-) We were very restrained, though, and didn't buy any more cloaks or lovely dresses, though there were many of both on sale in the massive market.
On both days events culminate in a re-enactment of the Battle of Tewkesbury - on the fields on which it was originally fought. (Twenty or so years ago they intended to build on the area - part of the incentive for the original establishment of the Festival was to stop that happening. Since these days it's the biggest event of its type in the country, it's worked and will hopefully continue to do so indefinitely.)
About 2000 re-enactors take part in the battle, from the UK, Europe and Australia/New Zealand. One hero this year was a Japanese guy who'd flown in from Tokyo to take part, complete with his own armour. :-) It was such a hot day yesterday that there were regular breaks for both sides to take on water but after an hour of to-and-froing Somerset's men broke and fled for the Abbey, Edward, "Prince of Wales" was killed in single combat with King Edward and the Yorkists won again... (The commentators regularly joke about letting the Lancastrians win one year, to make things more interesting, but I doubt it'll ever happen.)
There are some more interesting videos on the YouTube page - including a sort of documentary short, and some "helmet cam" footage from one of the re-enactment groups (the closest I'm ever likely to get to being in a sword fight).
gayalondiel and her brother telepresent, and gaya's goth outfit was much admired. :-) We were very restrained, though, and didn't buy any more cloaks or lovely dresses, though there were many of both on sale in the massive market.On both days events culminate in a re-enactment of the Battle of Tewkesbury - on the fields on which it was originally fought. (Twenty or so years ago they intended to build on the area - part of the incentive for the original establishment of the Festival was to stop that happening. Since these days it's the biggest event of its type in the country, it's worked and will hopefully continue to do so indefinitely.)
About 2000 re-enactors take part in the battle, from the UK, Europe and Australia/New Zealand. One hero this year was a Japanese guy who'd flown in from Tokyo to take part, complete with his own armour. :-) It was such a hot day yesterday that there were regular breaks for both sides to take on water but after an hour of to-and-froing Somerset's men broke and fled for the Abbey, Edward, "Prince of Wales" was killed in single combat with King Edward and the Yorkists won again... (The commentators regularly joke about letting the Lancastrians win one year, to make things more interesting, but I doubt it'll ever happen.)
There are some more interesting videos on the YouTube page - including a sort of documentary short, and some "helmet cam" footage from one of the re-enactment groups (the closest I'm ever likely to get to being in a sword fight).
