Warfare Through Time
If your students are studying ‘Warfare Through Time’ for their GCSE’s why not hire us to bring medieval warfare to life. (We are also creating a WW1 warfare display). In this medieval weapons workshop, students will get hands on with our replica weapons, feeling the pull of a longbow and holding a sword or mace. They’ll see some of the different medieval arrows. They’ll learn about the knights armour and how it developed through the centuries.
Each workshop lasts an hour & can be run in a school hall or large classroom.
Development of armour
In the first part of the workshop we will take a brief look at some of the armour that was worn in medieval times and how it developed over time as weapons advanced. From the mail of early knights, armour of crusading knights such as the great helm, armour of the 100 years war such as the houndskull bascinet and finally ending with armour of the War of the Roses and full plate armour.
Medieval longbow
The longbow was king of the battlefield from the 1300s onwards. It was a powerful weapon against adversaries. It was put to devastating effect in battles such as Agincourt and Crecy. A large percentage of an army could be made up of bowmen. In the mid to late 14th C laws were passed to ensure that all men aged between 16 & 65 would practice archery at the town archery butts on a Sunday. The place where this took place can still be discovered today by finding roads named ‘Butt Lane’ or other such similar titles. Students will be allowed to feel the draw-weight (pull) of various longbows from a low poundage 33lb bow up to a 100lb war bow.
We will also pass around an arrow minus it’s head, for students to examine the construction of an arrow. We’ll show them some of the various arrow heads and get them to guess their uses. We will also talk about the longbows abilities in comparison to the crossbow. We can not bring a crossbow to show as it’s against the law to let anyone under 18 to handle any part of a crossbow. A longbow would take years to master but anyone can learn to use a crossbow in minutes.
Medieval blades
We start by briefly looking at early weapons such as the Anglo Saxon Scramasax. A multi use blade with no crossguards. We move on to looking at the types of sword used in the fifteenth Century such as the long sword and demonstrate using willing volunteers how a knight would use them to kill an opponent. We also look at other blades such as the archers falchion. A heavy chopping blade designed for hacking, often used by archers. Students are invited to hold blunt swords which are passed around the classroom. This is carefully managed with safety instructions given.
Other weapons
We conclude by showing them how a flanged mace was used in the 15th C. Then we finish with the grand finale about poll weapons including a demonstration of how the knights favourite weapon the pollaxe would be used. We also have a Bec du Corbin (crows beak).
Happening History are husband & wife team, Wel & Karen Hamilton-Viall. We have been providing school workshops since 2005 as our full time occupation. History is our passion! We have £5 million public liability insurance and enhanced DBS disclosures can be provided on request.
