Festival of History

I haven’t got the time or inclination to do this justice, so here’s a stream of consciousness description. There are lots of photos on Flickr! We went on both days (last year we did just one) and met up with the Beans and Dave, J and E which was very nice.

They built a built a tithe barn from kit of labelled wooden parts, and a castle my chest height out of foam blocks the size of brieze blocks. (J got the idea of staggering the blocks “to make it strong, like a house”). It was very impressive, with crenelations, towers, buttresses and a lintel over the doors. Once it was built they tried to demolish it by throwing bean bags at it – good fun.

The Romans (Ermine Street Guard) were as impressive as last year – they cover the period of when the Romans invaded Britain. There were also some other Roman re-enactors from the end of the Roman period looking a lot less impressive (although just as authentic I expect). No fancy segmented armour, plumed helmets and rectangular shields – they looked more like Anglo-Saxons as things had gone downhill due to the empire crumbling.

Some random Norse and Norman fighting over Dublin, and British and German WW1 planes fighting overhead which was much less jingoistic than last year. I was glad to see German WW2 re-enactors (Brits pretending to be German) as well as the US Marines to balance things out a bit.

There was some drumming, singing, dancing, and playing [very] old board games – ancient Egyptian to Tudor. Plus some colouring, making knights helmets (with working visor) out of black sugar paper and paper fasteners – v. impressive.

A man and woman talked about Roman make up while the woman applied it to the man. White lead foundation, charcoal for eye lashes, fake eyebrows from mouse fur, lanolin (straight from the unwashed wool into some water) for hair, orange eyeshadow… Almost like clowns in a circus!

The boys’ favourite bit was the shows put on by BZents who well deserve the link. They tell stories by getting the children up to put on simple costumes and then repeat lines into the microphone, and then they narrate around it all. There is much bashing other child actors with foam truncheons and silly jokes. They did Robin Hood, Don’t Mess with Bess (Elizabeth I, including the Spanish Armada) and Horatio’s Last Hurrah (all of Nelson’s career). K was part of the English / British navy (with a sailing boat hat) and J was a Merry Man and part of the Spanish Navy.

There was a nice sepia sunset on the way home on Saturday, and then on Sunday night there was fantastic rainbow. It was double in places, and went all the way over from one horizon to the other. A very nice, enjoyable, educational and quite tiring weekend – definitely money well spent.