Well, we went and we shot - we managed to get 3 of us there at very short notice. Considering that there are not so many longbow archers around (about 1200 I believe in the UK as a whole), we did pretty well. Suprisingly, we had not been approached before the event and so this was stepping in at the last minute to help the organisors. Good fun though and nearly hit the hat. So, there were three real Macclesfield Archers there today amongst the imported re-enactors and imported pirates etc. We hope to have some of us there tomorrow as well. If you see a chap looking like me with a longbow there at around 3 in the afternoon, then that'll be me. Come and say hello. Yes, I know my new avatar does not show a longbow.
I recently read a story about the Macclesfield Archers, how they were apparently the model for the Cheshire and subsequently the famous Welsh Archers of mediaeval times - is all of that true, as far as we can tell?
I think it is the other way around - the Welsh archers were the models for the English. But I believe that the Cheshire Archers were pretty much amongst the earliest; maybe about the same time as the Welsh. As for the Macclefield archers being the inspiration for the Cheshire archers - well, maybe. It is nice to think so. However, history is a bit murky.
Was shooting my new longbow today. Made for me by Pip Bickerstaffe. I collected it yesterday and spent the morning shooting with it in our (club's) wood and then in the afternoon at the Charter thing. About as much fun as you can have with a piece of wood in your hands!
Well, that was a real shame. Got there to do my bit and found that the re-enactors were off home having been told that they weren't needed any more. So, the massed ranks of archers would have been.......me and one other! Everything was shutting down / packing up, the car park was empty and there were no customers for anything. It does not look to have been at all well organised or promoted. The archers didn't know where the shooting would be, for example, until the last minute and there just didn't seem to be much going on. The stallholders were seriously p****d off. Of course, the weather didn't help either. Does anyone know how this was funded?
Shame it didn't go as it should. On another note, I recently came across this chap - apparently the only British soldier on record in WW2 to have killed an enemy combatant using a longbow...
Well, there's a video of some of the event on the Express site by the article they wrote. I read about that chap, G. Eccentric seems to be the best word.
3 Macclesfield archers and about a dozen from elsewhere. We did our best but couldn't make it look like 750!
Well, I made it into the Macc Express on page 5; very fine picture of my back! I have to say that the Express report seems to be of a different event from the one I was at.
