Battle of Hastings Re-enactment
I’ve wanted to go since I was a youngster but just never managed it until this year.
Held annually on the anniversary of the historic event from October 1066, the people of English Heritage do an incredible job of putting on a weekend long memorial event.
As well as the battle re-enactment itself, there is an entire village set up with weavers, cooks, monks and nuns, axe-makers and mead brewers. There are craft stalls and have-a-go archery as well as an incredible falconry display with hawks passing just inches above the heads of the crowd.
But the most memorable for me was the “tale of the tapestry” a hilarious dramatization of the story of the Bayeaux tapestry. Not the story depicted on it of course, but the story of the cloth itself. Who commissioned it, where it travelled and the owners it passed through since it was made almost a thousand years ago.
Sitting on the grass on what was the actual battlefield where my ancestors fought and lost to Duke William of Normandy “the Conqueror” I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness for the simplicity of life that was lived back then.
It was brutal sure, and many did not survive the battles, the illness, cold winters and poor harvests, but I think if I had a time machine I would set it for the early 11th century and see how true the re-enactment really is.
History is, after all, always written by the winners.
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