Living History Village

The "village" is centred around a communal cooking area, under a large awning, where food is prepared and eaten and members of our company can be seen relaxing and talking between demonstrations, and maybe playing period games. The tents displayed are modern reproductions of authentic designs, and the company sleep in the "village" over the course of an event.

We offer a high degree of access and interactivity to the public, and welcome questions and conversations.

We have a number of very skilled artisans amongst our ranks, including an armourer, a wood worker and a calligrapher. We also portray a number of other crafts and skills, including fletching, authentic cooking, herbalism, travelling merchants, braiding and much more.

The Company prides itself in offering high standards of authenticity and interactive living history displays. We are always looking for new challenges and are continually striving to improve and enhance our knowledge of the periods we recreate, by investigating new areas and using new and extant evidence and research. The Company's academic background means the demonstrations on offer are informative, interesting and accurate.

Man at Arms Displays

The Company regularly presents demonstrations of 15th century fighting techniques and disciplines. Using authentically reproduced tourney weapons or tourney wasters (medieval practice weapons) the fight directors explain the growth and use of dagger, sword and pole arm combat. Using examples from a variety of sources, including German, Italian and early English manuals, the displays show the vicious nature of combat in our period.

The Ever popular "Arming the Knight" demonstration gives the public the chance to see just how a knight was dressed for battle or tourney, step by step, as depicted in the Hastings manuscript.

Our armoured knights demonstrate the spectacle of fighting in full harness - Harnessfechten - with swords, pollaxes and other medieval hand weapons. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of a fully armoured man vs. the longbow - as can be seen below.

Archery

The Company of Saint Joseph is fortunate to have some extremely skilled archers. Our archery demonstrations include target shooting with sharps and a display of the many types of arrow that was available to archers of the period. For use against different types of target, these arrows have different heads, such as the bodkin, the broadhead and the basket head. The public can feel the weight and learn about their use.

The flat shooting display pitches the power of the long bow against heavily armoured opponents advancing across a field. The arrows still pack quite a punch and this display is one of the favourites with the crowds, who's reaction to the heavy thuds of arrows in full flight finding their mark on our moving armoured "targets" is one of amazement, tinged with sympathy towards the men inside, as they stagger backwards under the force of the impact.