History Alive at Abbeystowe, 2024

 Rob and I are getting a little old and creaky, so (as with at the Abbey Festival) we went up a week early and set up (the organisers of the show are marvellous people and very accommodating) - this way the (adult) kids can help us load up 2 utes and 2 trailers the Saturday before the show, then come up with us on the Sunday and set up the shells of the tent and lift anything heavy out of the trailers for us; then Rob and I pootle around for a couple of days setting the rest of the encampment up and the rest of the group arrives later in the week and set up the insides of their tents (rugs, wall hangings, beds etcetera).

September here is usually still fairly cool (12º-26ºC on average) but we had an unseasonal heatwave and the Monday after we set up the tents got to 37º! and all we could do was sit in the shade and drink water and grumble about the bloody weather LOL, although we did make friends with the birds - poor little sods were wandering around with their beaks open so I filled a bowl with water and put it out for them and it was very well received :-)  We spent the next couple of days setting up small things, testing out new lamps, being amazed that the tents hardly moved when the wind picked up to about 30kph with 50 kph gusts (but I think we will eventually get some storm ropes in the kit).

I fully intended to take a lot of photos of the encampment this time, and I did take quite a few before the event but once the public arrived I was too busy running workshops and it completely slipped my mind (again >.<)... so these are of the 'quiet' time before the show :-)

 

Abbeystowe gets some spectacular dawns; I'm not usually an early riser except when we're camping - I think the 5 minute walk to the toilets might have something to do with it - usually I'd go back to bed but after that walk I'm quite awake LOL (which is not a bad thing on event days when the public will be arriving in a couple of hours and the encampment is a mess).

The first tent to get sorted out was, of course, the kitchen tent - the centre of all activity and source of coffee ;-)  A kitchen tent per se is not strictly period (although we can document most of the contents); one of our older tent roofs became leaky and while this isn't a problem with a grass floor, water dripping onto rugs and feather beds and small children was an issue so the roof was replaced.  We didn't want to throw out the leaky roof, and I think that in the period we're reenacting a tent roof, however old, would have been re-purposed because fabric was hellishly expensive... so I cut a smoke-hole in the top (modelled on innumerable huts, hovels, and long-house structures), made nice new walls for the new tent roof and kept the old (slightly scungey) ones for the kitchen tent, carved poles for it and we now have a 6m x 3m area for cooking and being warm :-)

 

The fire tray that sits in the centre of it isn't historically accurate either - it's what we call 'in keeping with the period', something that'll not look out of place and disturb the 'medieval ambience' or something like that; none of the places we do events like having their grassed areas marked up by fires, so we all have our fires about 40cm about the ground and the style and method of fireplace varies from encampment to encampment.

However, we can cook when it's raining, and thee tent is roughly divided in half by the fireplace - a cooking area on one side and a sitting are on the other, which of a night gets lined with blankets so the children can bed down; this allows their parents a bit of time off to go and visit other encampments and have a drink or two while knowing that their small folk are warm and supervised :-)

Setting up any of the tents takes a while - there's a lot of small bits and pieces that make the encampment look lived-in and 'real' - I don't really go with the minimalist approach favoured by some of a tent, a rug, a bed, a table and a jug and please-believe-I'm-living-here-for-a-few-days LOL... but it does take time to set up, and we do have rather a lot of tents:

From the left: (hardly visible but there) the sunshade we put up for the public to use, Sam's tent (5 people), Ellie's tent (4 people), my tent (2), the kitchen, a woodchopping area, Nat's tent (1 person), the kids' tent (sort of a playroom) and the pavilion.

(Gratuitous early morning misty pic)

 

The event was lovely - Festival, in comparison, is bustle-y and hectic, which you'd expect with 10,000 people on the ground each day - but HA was, as people kept commenting, 'cruise-y' and there was time to chat with people and it didn't matter much if workshops did go over time because we ended up chatting about other techniques and there was a general feeling of relaxation :-)  Some of the patrons had come to HA because they'd been to Festival and loved it, others were completely new to the whole historical re-enactment thing and were enjoying the experience immensely, and the general consensus seems to have been that everyone had a great time :-)

Footnote - the stuffed cabbage went over very well and every scrap was eaten and could I make 2 next time - and it's been christened 'ogre-head'; and Lyra loved her sewing box and spent the weekend embroidering a Thing for a young friend of hers ;-).

For reasons explained about I don't have any pics of the actual event, so may I direct you to the History Alive facebook page.

After Abbey, and preparing for HA

 Packing the encampment down after the Abbey Festival was slower than usual because it was muddy and raining and we couldn't just dump gear next to whichever vehicle it travelled in (in preparation for it actually being loaded, in a somewhat tetris-like fashion) so it was well after dark by the time our entourage (2 utes with trailers, 2 cars with trailers and a wee small Mazda) got to my youngest daughter's place so we could hang nearly 100m of wet tent walls in her boat shed (and even then the damn things got a bit of mildew) and each took roofs home with us and spread them out.  Everything else got unpacked the following day - it was damp but not terrible - and then the massive washing and washing-up operation began...  The tentage (with the exception of the kitchen tent which is so smoked nothing would grow on it) got sprayed with a clove oil mix - it kills the mildew spores but doesn't get rid of the black spots (unlike bleach which gets rid on the black spots but doesn't necessarily kill the spores, and damages the cotton canvas into the bargain >.<) and once everything had been washed and dried and put away we were back to making things for the next show - History Alive, which was taking place about 2 months after the Abbey Festival.

September can be quite windy here, and our encampment was to be was on the 'open' side of the Abbeystowe field (we're usually nestled next to virgin bushland with tall trees, which really cuts down the wind problem), so there was a brief discussion about whether we needed to make up storm ropes for all the tents or not but in the end and mainly because of the expense) we decided we'd make do with the 40-odd metres we had on hand and keep an eye on the weather; I must note that about 8 years ago we were camped on that side of the field and after a rather windy night where the tent was 'breathing' like a huge beast we emerged to find one of the smaller Viking tents had been picked up and blown over a 1.5m fence into the the cow paddock...  

 

A friend of mine was running a workshop on medieval dental hygiene and one of the recipes called for rosemary charcoal, so I cooked her up some rosemary twigs in my charcloth pot and they turned out quite well :-)

I think it took about 20 minutes to go from bare twigs to smoking to smoke-dying-down then vanishing (at which point a coin covered the hole in the tin to stop any oxygen getting in) and after the tin cooled I took the lid off and voila - little charcoal sticks :-)  Evidently quite a few recipes for dentifrice/tooth powder call for some sort of charcoal, because it's slightly abrasive.

The kitchen burns kit (first aid) which lived in a plastic lunchbox in a basket with a whole lot of other modern stuff (flyspray, mozzie coils, surface spray, plastic zip-lock bags etc.) had to be found another home because the basket was getting over-full; I did up a little bentwood box for it so it could sit out in the open and not look out of place (and most importantly still be accessible); I cannot recommend the Soov spray highly enough - it has a bit of anaesthetic (lignocaine) in it and not only works well on burns but helps chafing as well ;-)

 

My second-oldest granddaughter was having a birthday around about the time we'd be doing History Alive, and she'd recently developed a passion for crochet and embroidery, so I did her up a sewing box with assorted bits and pieces...  As they grow up, the kids are finding the toys in the Kids' Tent a bit 'young' for them and so need other things to do over the reenactment weekend; I dyed up some yarn, grandpa and I spent some quality time with a plank and his thicknesser machine and made some tablet-weaving cards, and I carved her a little shuttle and a lucet (yes, I know they're not historically accurate, but the cord they produce seems to be and now she can make her own damn shoelaces ;-) )

About a week before we left for the show I came across a 14th century recipe for stuffed cabbage ('cabodge y-farcyd', from Richard III's The Forme of Cury) which seemed likely to have been appropriate for our period; I made a test one (with considerably less spicing than the original recipe called for because I wanted the kids to enjoy it) and it wasn't too bad, if a little bland; so i did up a mix of the filling with a little more flavouring and froze it - working with mincemeat in a camping environment, in a 30ºC kitchen, can be a recipe for all sorts of problems...

The recipe basically calls for a hollowed out head of cabbage, stuffed with a mixture of mince meat (ground beef, I think the Americans cal it), eggs, breadcrumbs, rice, salt'n'pepper, and assorted spices.  I left the onion out because a couple of our folk don't handle it well and substituted a bit of aji-no-moto.  Stuff the cabbage with the meat mix, whack a couple of leaves over the hole and tie the entire thing up in cheesecloth and boil for a couple of hours (for 500g mince).  The cabbage loses a lot of its flavour and oddly enough doesn't flavour the mince - I find it watery and a bit ick but evidently it went well wrapped around the chipolata sausages we served as well.

Preparations complete, we were ready for History Alive at Abbeystowe :-)

Abbey Festival 2024

 The BIG show for the year!  10,000 people a day (and the online tickets sold out inside of 36 hours!).  They tried something new this year - a 'Family Fun Day' on the Friday (as well as the usual event which runs on the Saturday and Sunday) which ran for about 4 hours and was for folk who found the main event daunting or difficult to get around - families with young children, disabled folk, neurodivergent folk who don't handle crowds well.  It was a good (part) day and was well-received by the attendees and most of the re-enactors :-) and after our visitors had left we finished setting up for the main event on the weekend.

I'm not usually an early riser, but make an exception at events, usually because the toilets are sufficiently far away from my nice warm bed that by the time I get back I'm no longer sleepy and so I arc up the fire and make myself a coffee... the kitchen first thing in the morning is my Happy Place :-)  I have it down to a fine art LOL - put about a cup and a half of water into my tiny little copper pot, light a Flaming Cupcake (a sort of a candle made of sawdust and wax with a bit of rope in it as a wick) under it with a couple of pinecones on top and some kindling, and once it's caught add a couple of small bits of hardwood - and I have boiling water inside of about 5 minutes :-)

We set up early this time - the kids helped us load on the previous Saturday and we set up the tent shells on the Sunday and then Rob and I stayed over (the kids rejoined us later in the week before the event) and it rained and rained... by the second day the doorway into the kitchen was so boggy I had to skin a couple of firewood logs and use the bark as a door mat LOL.

People still came though, and seemed to have a fantastic time :-) even though the site got muddier and boggier - lots of comments about how 'authentic' the weather was LOL.  All the bits and pieces we'd made over the past year or so came together and I must admit I was pretty proud of our encampment :-)

The Pavilion (a.k.a. dining room) and the Wayside Chapel:

All our stripey-roofed tents:

The Grumpy Old People's tent (Rob and I):

My spices display in the kitchen tent:

Needless to say it's not really the done thing to run around with a camera/phone/modern item while the public are there because it spoils the whole feel of the event (evidently... something about immersion... don't get me started...), so a lot of the photos I have of the event are yoinked off facebook because they're by the very talented official event photographers... credits for them appear as a watermark on the photo :-)

The kids playing tavli:

One of my textile workshops (I did 6 over the weekend...):

A really nice photo of my tent - please excuse the loom on the altar LOL, I was setting up for a workshop...

Nat's new wall hanging:

Lyra playing with the mini-tent:

On the Sunday afternoon after everyone had left, the lovely people from the Birds of Prey group let us hold their eagle and take photos :-)  Such a big bird was remarkably light weight - I guess they'd have to be or they wouldn't fly LOL.

We started packing down on the Sunday after the public had left, but did most of it the following day - an encampment that takes a good couple of days to set up isn't going to come down overnight ;-)

Did I mention how muddy it was?

The Lead-up to Abbey Festival 2024

 AROW got us back into the swing of things again, from refreshing our memories as to how tents go up and furniture goes together (better to stuff about at AROW than when setting up for a major show LOL), and once we were home again (and everything was washed and mended and so forth) the push was on to have gear finished and the encampment looking as speccy as possible.

I'll note here that we do have a lot of gear, even for 12 people; but we're portraying travelling nobles and there's plenty of indication that some of them travelled with even more gear than we do (!), and considerably more frequently.  I think part of it is also that Rob and I have been doing this for 30-odd years and found fairly early on that medieval-style camping can be bloody inefficient if you don't bring the right gear; for a long time I tended to bring spares of a lot of things (blankets, belts, clothing, bowls, cups, spoons, etc.), because there was always someone who'd 'forgotten' theirs and needed to borrow... then I watched them pack down their rather minimalist encampment and head home in the space of a couple of hours, while we were taking half the damn day and I decided that I needed to triage the packing list and just bring what we needed - and felt rather selfish and un-caring of my fellow man but got over it.

By and large we had pretty much everything we needed for Festival, but I had to make a pair of tongs for the charcoal brick which needed lighting in the fire (as opposed to the usual sort, which we ran out of and couldn't find, which light with a lighter); a spectacular throw rug appeared so Sam swapped out a drab wall hanging for it; and I discovered my straw broom (essential encampment kit when I'm holding workshops in my tent and expect people to sit on the floor) had been disintegrated by borers - I initially bought another one, then decided to pull the old one apart and remake it and didn't botch it too badly... and it's quite an advantage to have one living in my tent and the other in the kitchen ;-)

We put the finishing touched to Nat's Scribe display and uploaded pictures to the Blogger site so people could scan a QR cade and then find out more about all the bits and pieces;

and I made my eldest grand-daughter a limp-bound book of medieval fairytales and stories so she had something to read at events as she's getting s little old for more of the toys in the Kids' tent ;-)

A few adjustments to clothing, preparation of a menu for the event to feed 12 people (and then buying it) and we were pretty much ready to go :-)

AROW24

 AROW is the Abbey Reenactors-Only Weekend and usually occurs on the May Day long weekend.  Aside from a chance to camp and socialise, it's invaluable as a practice set-up for the Abbey Festival (10,000 people a day!) and to test that all the new gear and ideas that emerged over the summer period actually work...

Sam got to test out her new tent:

Nat got to set up her new Scribe's display:

I got to test out the cardwoven fence and the new sign:

We set the new Kids' Tent up and it was very well received :-)

Our first-aiders had an inservice with the new kit.

We all had a play with the flint and steel, and the kids made tiny fires (in the fire tray...)

Rob set up his axe-throwing target and some lovely viking lasses joined our girls throwing for most of the afternoon :-)

We had some rather charming visitors when it came time to pack down and head home :-)

Working towards AROW24

 Reenactment is one of those hobbies where there's a constant flow of things to do, whether it's upgrading current gear, or stumbling across something cool while researching and then making/doing/learning that.

The first upgrade was the kids' cups - what they has was adequate and reasonably in keeping with the period, but  I wanted to make them something better:

and because the entire family's neurodivergent in a variety of forms ("neurospicy!) I made them some in-keeping-with-the period fidget toys - metal rings and bone bead paternosters.

I came across a clay frypan in an op-shop and bought it on spec that it would be reasonably period; dug around a bit online and found it'd pass, and then learnt to cook with pottery gear as it was a lot more typical than iron pots and pans (which were rare/valued highly enough that women willed them to their daughters in some cases!)

We made up a fire-starting kit because someone at the previous show wanted to know how it was done, and the whole group is now reasonably proficient with flint and steel.

I came a cross a reference to sprang weaving and so of course had to give it a go - I can't do anything fancy, but I can make bags :-)

We put together a sunshade for the public to use, because quite often events are hot - even in winter!  We had a member of the public go down in our encampment with heat exhaustion at the previous Abbey - there's a false sense of security that because its winter there won't be a problem, but between the heat and the lack of humidity and the preference for people to dress up in costume for the event (and some of the costumes the public come in put a lot of reenactor efforts to shame - they're magnificent!) it's very easy to overheat (jumping ahead to Abbey24, it rained constantly and the sunshade was used as a rain shelter, but at least it was used).

Nat's getting a Scribe's desk display ready for Abbey24, so Rob built her a lectern to put her parchment on.

...and the blasted finials on top of the tents occasionally need re-gilding...

And we'll test out all the new stuff at AROW!

Post-event tweaking

 After an event there's always *that* discussion - what worked, what didn't, what needs fixing/mending, what we should get for the next show or do for the next show.

The first thing on the list (once all the washing up and washing had been taken care of) was a cordon to go around the pavilion to replace the borrowed wicker fence - we never realised we needed a fence until we were offered use of that one at Abbey 23, and of course then we figured we should really get our own :-)  Unlike some groups we don't fence off the entire encampment but there are some places we don't want people wandering through, either because it's dangerous (the kitchen and the wood-chopping area) or because there's a chance things may get accidentally broken (the pavilion, where we have a lot of glass and ceramic pieces, and inside most of the tents (similar reason).  99.9% of the people who visit our display are wonderful and interested and careful, but one gets a little scarred by the few thoughtless ones - the woman with a horde of sticky-fingered, toffee-apple-coated children who stood and watched as they wiped their hands on my wall hangings, the old dears deep in discussion as to whether the item they were attempting to bed was a plastic or bone needle (bone, took a couple of hours to make, and I intervened before they snapped it...), the parents who put my loom weights around their child's neck and walked out of the display and feigned surprise when asked that they return it, the children who came into the kids' play area and belted the carved and painted toy animals so hard the legs broke off, the chap who got into my bed (between the sheets) with his boots on because he "didn't realise I slept there", the other chap who opened the trunk next to my bed (where I keep my personal/modern stuff and which now has a lock on it) and wittily announced that he didn't know they wore jeans and joggers in Medieval Times...  All reenactors have similar (and sometimes more harrowing) tales so we use cordons and polite little 'keep out' signs.

I decided I didn't want something as substantial as a wicker fence - hard to pack and transport to events - so tablet-wove a 14 metre tape and sewed little felt flags on it, then painted up some little wooden stakes to support it and it's done its job very nicely ever since :-)

Another issue was the group's sign - evidently people had trouble seeing it, and in a way I sympathised as it was perhaps a little small, and may have got lost from view with the pavilion as a background - bling against bling, so to speak ;-)  I made another, larger, fancier (!) one out of canvas and that seems to have solved that problem :-)

I'd been toying with the idea of using QR codes to allow people to find out more about what they were looking at (explanations, documentation, references and so on) but didn't get them done for Abbey23 - producing the QR codes themselves was quite simple, but writing the pages they led to took a lot longer than I'd thought... so I got stuck into that so I could try it out for Abbey24.  The codes needed to be sufficiently unobtrusive that they didn't detract from the medieval vibe of the event, but obvious enough people would use them; and the web pages they led to needed to be fairly simple and quick to download onto a phone because the internet coverage around the Abbey area is not fantastic - and the event gets 10,000 visitors a day, plus reenactors, plus stallholders, plus staff.  I settled on using Blogger pages (see the link to the Oltramar Encampment Tour in the right-hand column).

We've ended up with a QR code disc for every tent and also for Nat's scribe display and the spices display.

I resurrected the tiny 2 metre square tent that'd been Nat's before I made her her current (3x3) one and fitted it out to be the kids' tent - they need somewhere not only to store their toys and to play in, but also a space to retreat to that's their space - an event with 10,000 people a day can be quite daunting even for adults.

I think the worse thing about looking at photos of an event is that you realise that things like hangings and blankets are getting shabby and need replacing, trunks need repainting or covering, tentage needs cleaning... and there's always just a bit more embroidery/sewing/painting/etcetera than there is time for >.< and so things get triaged to get done before the next event, or pushed back to be done afterwards.