Both myself and boyfriend have strong interests in history, particularly medieval history. Boyfriend's interest stems from his childhood, and all the trips that he went on with his family visiting castles and palaces around the UK. My interest stems from Philippa Gregory's books...
Anyway, since we first met, boyfriend has been promising me that he would take me to a medieval joust, which are sometimes held in the summer months at different castles around the UK. However we'd never yet managed to find one that was nearby and in decent weather. Until about a month ago, that is, when we found a joust was taking place at nearby Eltham Palace.
It turns out Eltham Palace is very close to where we live - we don't even need to go into London to get there (makes a nice change). The Sunday of the joust was a beautifully sunny and hot day, we had packed a picnic in my special picnic backpack and we managed to get to Eltham in pretty good time. It turns out Eltham Palace grounds are actually very large and perfect for a joust. And not only was a mere joust taking place, but in fact there was a whole medieval festival set up in the grounds.
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| Introduction by the serving wench |
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| Women at their work |
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| Archers get younger every year |
They had laid on a full program for the day, including falconry, sword and weapon demonstrations, an archery display, demonstrations by squires on dressing their knights in their armour, and of course, the joust!! As well as all these, the grounds were filled with the enticing aroma of barbecued meats, there was a beer and mead tent set up for those of us not required to drive home or babysit, and there were loads of tents inhabited by medieval role players who were working at their livelihoods. These included jewellery making, baking of breads, whittling of furniture, and so on. It was fantastic just walking around watching these people at work.
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| One of the many tilts from the joust |
As you can see from the above video, the joust itself was brilliantly done. The umpire and his flagmen rode around the field throughout, naming the contestants for the joust and telling us the score posthaste. The rules were as follows for each tilt:
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| Umpire of the Joust |
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| Knight of the East, Pre-Joust |
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| Mid-Tilt |
Break the lance on the chest: 1 point
Break the lance on the shoulder: 2 points
Break the lance on the head: 3 points
Each duo would tilt three times to determine their overall result. The four contestants were the Knights of the North, South, East and West, all distinguished by their colours, the plume on their half-helms and the heraldry on their shields. The knights all took turns tilting against each other and of course boyfriend and I put a bet on who would win. I supported the Knights of the South and the West, and boyfriend went for the North and the East. Loser had to buy drinks.
It was all very close, but the final came down to the Knight of the East and Knight of the South. You can guess who all the Londoners cheered for but ultimately, the East won and I had to skedaddle to the mead tent. But it was totally worth it - the atmosphere at the joust was brilliant, the sun was shining and it was an absolutely brilliant experience.
Before the joust occurred, we went to watch the Knight of the North don his armour. This was his squire's job and a long job indeed, for even working at a good pace it took half an hour to get the knight fully armoured. I have to give a shout out to the squire - he made a real effort to describe all the different components of the armour and explain why they were shaped in particular ways and so forth. Attaching each component looked like quite a skilled job - somewhat naively I had always just assumed that a suit of armour was made up of the top bit and the bottom, and that you put it on in the same way you don a pair of trousers and a jumper. I was totally wrong of course.
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| The Knight of the North donning his armour |
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| Pre-Joust |
After the joust we went to watch a spot of sword and weapon fighting, which again was extremely interesting. Nowadays we're so used to watching sword fights in film and on Tv, and our perception of what a real sword fight looks like is totally linked to this stage fighting. By this I mean wild swings with the sword, a good amount of distance between the combatants and the standard leaping over the furniture or whatever surrounding the combatants are in. These demonstrations gave us a more realistic idea of what sword fighting is like, which is very close up combat.
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| Sword-Fighting Demo |
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| Axe Fighting Demo |
So there we go. An excellent day at the joust. I would totally go again, but I have to say that I'm really jealous of all the little kids there who get to dress up in medieval outfits for this sort of thing. I don't think I'd quite get away with it myself. Anyway, I completely recommend going to this sort of thing if you get the opportunity, and especially if you've got kids you want to entertain. As a kid myself, it was the perfect day!!!
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