Festival of History is the next best thing to time travel

I stumbled upon English Heritage's "Festival of History" more than a decade ago, back when it was a much smaller event. Today it has grown into an absolutely massive event, stretching over many acres in the park surrounding Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire. It is pure joy for history geeks, and in England there are plenty of those.
At its heart, the festival is a long weekend during which all the historical re-enactment societies come together, set up camp and invite you to wander through. Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, so many medievalists they’re sub-divided into appropriate centuries. Sealed Knot (the English civil war), colonial wars, Boer wars and both world wars. You can wander at leisure around these camps, where everything is historically authentic and the re-enactors are happy to strike up any conversation.

They are frighteningly well informed. There was the bowman from Henry V's troop who delighted in telling me how his quilted armour and yew longbow were exactly as they would have been at the siege of Harfleur. The Anglo Saxon who’d spent many, many thousands on armour made by craftsmen in the same way and style as that discovered at Sutton Hoo and now in the British Museum. And of course, the rifleman, French grenadier and naval gunner all diving into a staggering level of detail about the Napoleonic Wars. I was thinking about stopping by the late 18th century encampment to give some Redcoats hell for taxation without representation, but I thought I’d be polite. After all, with two passports and an English partner, in re-enactment terms I'd probably be more likely to be with the “loyal Americans” than the rebels.

But the camps are only the tip of the iceberg. The battle re-enactments are the big audience draws, and the arenas in which these happen have multiplied since I was here last. The biggest and most impressive shows take place in the main arena. Here, we watched a melee between Norman knights, a history of the British infantryman with army groups from 400 years showing off their kit and fighting style, and a Napoleonic skirmish that featured foot soldiers, cavalry, cannons and plenty of smoke and drama. We were treated to an impressive display of tent pegging. It's now a popular sport in India (champion Prince Malik and his team dazzled), but was originally a military tactic in which spear-bearing riders charged into a camp and plucked tent pegs from the ground, sending camps into confusion.

Another field hosted an all-day Medieval tournament with knights in shining armour. Elsewhere, the Agincourt venue staged battles from that campaign all day. And below the noble Georgian prospect of Kelmarsh Hall itself, a smaller field hosted skirmishes like the retreat from Bunker Hill (unsurprisingly, the battles re-enacted from the American War of Independence were the ones the Brits won) and scenes from the Jacobite rebellion.

Elsewhere, a tent hosted a continuous cycle of short plays capturing various times in history. (I would have liked to have caught the one about an Anglo-Roman woman fretting about her future as the legions pulled out, but we ran out of time.) Another venue hosted lectures and book signings, another a trade show demonstrating the work of various historical and archeological organisations, and yet another featuring music from different ages.

We arrived soon after opening at 9:30 and kept up a heady pace ‘til our 4pm departure. Still, we probably only saw half of what we would have ideally consumed. If I have one criticism of English Heritage ... and it's a strong one ... it's that they don't put the event schedule on line so you can do advance planning to make more of your weekend.

One lesson for next year: Bring a picnic lunch. The food providers were limited to a sparse and unimaginative set of the usual, big-event catering vans. Burgers, fish and chips, carved roast sandwiches. Expensive and uninspiring. The only memorable food was a range of fudge sold by a woman in one of the Medieval encampments. I doubt it was historically accurate ... sugar being rare and chocolate not yet discovered at the time of her historically accurate costume, but it was a tasty accompaniment as we watched the English trounce the French on the Road to Waterloo.