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After being intercepted by the local four-legged killing machine, I paid a visit to Tewkesbury Medieval Festival for the first time today, travelling in the company of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rustica and crazyscot, and meeting sally_maria, gayalondiel and navyboy82, and muuranker and exexexMemSec there. With only a few hours there, it was difficult to immerse oneself in the place, but I've never seen a historical re-enactment festival on this scale before. Knights and ladies and exotic ambassadors from distant cultures stomped or flittered between the tents; weaponry, mediaeval cooking equipment, clothing (both recreated mediaeval and standard summer festival garb) jewellery and books old and new (one author had a tent selling his self-published Arthurian trilogy) were sold beneath the heraldic banners of England's fifteenth-century dynastic conflict.
The need to return to Oxford meant that we didn't quite see all the re-enactment of the battle of Tewkesbury, and the place where we sat ended up being behind well behind Edward IV's lines, but I have a few fairly good pictures of banners and liveried footsoldiers, as well as the broadcaster John Sergeant, in costume as was his cameraman, covering the battle for a forthcoming television series on the British national character. The forces of Edward IV were winning, which is just as well for the integrity of the historical record.
Pictures can be found over here (or will be soon).
rustica and crazyscot, and meeting sally_maria, gayalondiel and navyboy82, and muuranker and exexexMemSec there. With only a few hours there, it was difficult to immerse oneself in the place, but I've never seen a historical re-enactment festival on this scale before. Knights and ladies and exotic ambassadors from distant cultures stomped or flittered between the tents; weaponry, mediaeval cooking equipment, clothing (both recreated mediaeval and standard summer festival garb) jewellery and books old and new (one author had a tent selling his self-published Arthurian trilogy) were sold beneath the heraldic banners of England's fifteenth-century dynastic conflict. The need to return to Oxford meant that we didn't quite see all the re-enactment of the battle of Tewkesbury, and the place where we sat ended up being behind well behind Edward IV's lines, but I have a few fairly good pictures of banners and liveried footsoldiers, as well as the broadcaster John Sergeant, in costume as was his cameraman, covering the battle for a forthcoming television series on the British national character. The forces of Edward IV were winning, which is just as well for the integrity of the historical record.
Pictures can be found over here (or will be soon).
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