Just a short reminder for all our members and friends in the Sydney area. This coming weekend the St Ives Medieval Faire will be taking place. It should be a spectacular event.

Among the attractions are ‘The Jousting Knights of the St Ives Tournament’, including our own Knight in Shining Armour from the 2013 Australasian Convention, who will be matching his skills with the cream of the world’s jousting knights.

You can experience living in the middle ages in the Medieval Encampment. If your interest extends to an earlier time than Richard III, you may be interested in the Viking war. We all have heard about trebuchets, but what do we actually know about them? Here is our chance to learn more. And Full Flight Birds of Prey will recreate medieval hunting and falconry scenarios to demonstrate how birds of prey were used to hunt in Richard’s day.

Should you get exhausted with all these fascinating attractions, a visit to the Medieval Tavern might refresh you. A special medieval beer, called Sir Andrew’s Gruit, is on offer. It is brewed using herbs and roots instead of hops just like in medieval times.

You can still pre-book tickets and save on the website of the St Ives Medieval Faire, but you can also buy them at the gate.

An event not to be missed!

Tags: Fair, Jousting, NSW Branch

On Sunday 6th July I attended the Winterfest Medieval Fair in Parramatta. There were amazing historical costumes, arms and armour, traditional jewellery, cloaks (and daggers!), as well as sword fighting to see and experience.

I tried traditional spiced mead while watching the Templars combat the Vikings and learnt how to strike a flint to make fire. The birds of prey lecture was fascinating and I now understand a lot more about hawking and falconry! A jousting tournament took place with the riders also pitching themselves against the quintain and hoops. I also discovered how heavy armour is and decided I’d probably make a poor medieval knight!

The next medieval fair will be at St Ives on the 20th and 21st of September.

Tags: Fair

We are very grateful to Dr Mark St Leon to be able to bring you his fascinating talk, which he gave at our branch general meeting on 14 June.  Members and Friends of the NSW branch will also be able to read his talk in the 2014 issue of The Chronicles of the White Rose, due at the December general meeting.  

The evolution of the Medieval Fair

Preamble

I would like to thank the Richard III Society for inviting me to talk to you this afternoon. The title of my talk is “The evolution of the Medieval Fair”.

I do not confess to be anything more than a dilettante on Medieval history and society. My true area of knowledge and expertise is the history of the circus in Australia, in which earlier generations of my family played a key role for well over a hundred years, since before the gold rush period of the 1850s. My, I daresay, definitive history of the circus in Australia was published by Melbourne Books in 2011.

Nevertheless, the circus of the modern age – which was first conceived in London about the time Captain James Cook was charting the east coast of Australia in 1769 – has roots in the wandering entertainers who roamed the provinces and performed on the fairgrounds of Medieval Europe for well over a thousand years after the fall of Rome. Those wandering entertainers in turn can be traced to the people who amused the crowds with displays of acrobatics, ropewalking and animal training in between the gladiatorial events and chariot races of ancient Rome. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Fair