MEDIEVAL RE-ENACTMENT & LIVING HISTORY

In the intermission between doing displays the members of the Great Northwood Bowmen can be seen living the life of those that they represent in an excellent example of a Medieval Encampment.

Authentic camping, cooking, medieval archery training, costume, music, military training, pastimes for the noble and the peasant, and the daily activities of men and women alike, are some of the things that we seek to accurately portray when on our living history site.

More recently we have decided that one of our main objectives as a re-enactment society is to educate the public. We have developed a 'walk-through' system (see right) which takes the public around a route to enable them to see all the points of interest. We have developed captions which are placed around the encampment to offer some basic information to the public on important aspects of medieval life that are on display. The information provided is by no means exhaustive so that our members are still able to talk to the public about the tents, cooking, pastimes and weapons amongst other things when not away doing displays.

Whilst some of our members enjoy representing a variety of periods during the Middle Ages, when we are all together, we represent a relatively peaceful time in English history. We have set the year to be around 1471, during the later years of King Edward IV's reign after he has returned from exile. When re-enacting we seek to provide a very clear picture of medieval society and the hierarchy that was in place. We have the founder of the Northwood Bowmen himself, Sir Edward Northwood, the Neville-Plantagenet family consisting of Lady Cicely herself and her children Lady Anne, Lady Margaret and Richard Duke of Gloucester, there is also Lady Margaret Beauchamp, Lady Katherine Whitfield and William ducc de Barras, Earl of Lastingham. The nobility is always closely followed by a retinue of archers/servants.

Please view the Characters Homepage for a detailed biography of each character.