Timmy's Conflicting Interests: What it's all about.

So there's this book called The Medieval Soldier: 15th century campaign life recreated in photographs by John Howe (the LOTR artist) and Gerry Embleton. It features loads of fantastic photos of the White Company (NOW DEFUNCT) and the Company of St George, two of the foremost medieval reenactment groups, and frankly is THE book that every medievalist should own and if you don't have a copy, shame on you! Rumour has it they plan to make a new version, in the meantime mere mortals like my group, the Suffolk free Company, aspire to produce Living History to this standard.

Most of the Suffolks outside the Cott on Sunday morning. Getting everyone in the same place at the same time is tricky you know:0)

Now we are very fortunate as we are re-enactors at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, probably the place that started the recreation of domestic life in bygone days, For those of you who don't know, Kentwell Hall is a Redbrick Tudor Manor house, which has been owned for the past forty years by Patrick Phillips and his wife Judith. Apart from renovating the hall itself there are several other period buildings on the manor, including the fabulous Moat House and a variety of farm buildings on the Barnsward all of which were rebuilt by Tudor re-enactors (one of whom is in our household). Kentwell has featured in three articles in Wargames Illustrated which I wrote about the Spanish Armada crisis of 1588.

Every now and then Kentwell has low key events that are a little more flexible with what will take place. The weekend of 22nd May was one such weekend; Wool Weekend is when the sheep on the manor are sheared and various 'Tudors' who work with wool are also present. Whilst most of our group don't work with wool, we do cover a huge range of other period crafts so we were very pleased when we were allowed to take over 'the Cott' for the weekend and bring it to life. The Cott is a 15th century Yeoman farmer's dwelling. We are also quite fortunate as we have an excellent photographer in our midst, Bendy, and although he doesn't usually do Kentwell he was allowed on the manor this weekend and before and after hours he was able to take a whole bunch of photos, so many that we may well just have to make our own book, hmmm.

So what follows is just a sample of what we got. There were so many that it will cover a couple of blog entries, especially as some of us took Elizabethan kit as well and we took photos in that, all of which will go in another post:0) Special thanks must go to PP for allowing us the privilege of playing in the Cott and Bendy for the great photos as always!