What an event. We could not have hoped for a more pleasant close to the season. We set up camp on a glorious friday evening, and enjoyed a spectacular sunset over the beautiful grounds of Kenilworth Castle. Horses Boreas and Contessa were overjoyed to find that their holiday home for the weekend provided an abundance of lush green grass - something which has been in short supply due to the dry weather this year. Saturday was spent in the final planning and rehearsing of Sunday and Monday's events.
This was a multi period event, and we (with our fellow member groups from Livery and Maintenance) were accompanied by Normans, Tudors and English Civil War Soldiers. Despite limited access to the venue, setting up, packing down, and the coordination of arena events ran like a well oiled machine, thanks to the efforts of English Heritage event organisers Charlie Fear and Helen Budd.
Our arena displays consisted of a display of mounted hunting skills, and training young horses for joust and battle. A fierce contest at hunting skills was fought between Ladies Margaret and Cicely on the second day, with Lady Cicely victorious.
Frank the boar, now fully recovered from his exploits in Scarborough ventured into the arena only to be speared with a javelin, knocked down with a lance, and then attacked by a visiting dog! The use of the warhammer and mace was demonstrated on an unfortunate watermelon, with spectacular consequences (Much to the delight of the grooms - who got to sample an unusual delicacy for 15th Century Englishmen).
Frank the boar, now fully recovered from his exploits in Scarborough ventured into the arena only to be speared with a javelin, knocked down with a lance, and then attacked by a visiting dog! The use of the warhammer and mace was demonstrated on an unfortunate watermelon, with spectacular consequences (Much to the delight of the grooms - who got to sample an unusual delicacy for 15th Century Englishmen).
On camp we provided "show and tell" demonstrations of crossbow and polearms, our smaller visitors tried our armour, sallets and padded jacks for size which gave their Mums and Dads some nice photo opportunities. The various stages of construction of a maille standard (a protective neck piece worn by archers and billmen) were shown.
The visitors enjoyed listening to and learning about medieval music and instruments, including hurdy gurdy, gemshorn, recorders and psaltery. 
Boreas and contessa, when not taking part in the arena displays, stayed on camp to lap up all the attention lavished on them by their grooms and the visitors.
So until next season, it's goodbye from John Nesfield's Retinue, Boreas Contessa and poor old Frank. We hope you have enjoyed following our adventures this year. We'll be adding new photographs to the galleries soon, and listing our events for next year - so do keep checking the website regularly.
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Thanks to Maddy and Anthony Gunn for the photographs in this post.
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