Remembering Our Heritage (Preserving History Through Re-Enactment)

7 min read

Published on 20/23/2021

Delapré Abbey is an English neo-classical mansion in Northamptonshire which incorporates the remains of a former monastery, the Abbey of St Mary de la Pré. It was founded as a nunnery at some time around the year 1145 and was devoted to the congregation of the major Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, France.

A short walk away from the mansion itself is one of the remaining Queen Eleanor crosses, erected by Edward I, to commemorate the funnery procession of the deceased Eleanor of Castile, his beloved wife. Of a total of twelve of these crosses (erected at the resting stops on the route from Lincoln where her body was embalmed to Westminster where she was interred at Westminster Abbey) only three remain standing today, these are the two in Northamptonshire, those at Geddington and Hardingstone and the remaining one at Waltham Cross. The one in Hardingstone lies to the south of the Abbey on the line, unsurprisingly, of the historic London Road.

Northamptonshire itself is pivotal to a host of our nation’s history with archeological finds increasing in frequency dating from around 500BC, including a number of iron age hill forts. Prior to Roman settlement the region would form the northernmost possession of the Catuvellauni tribe. After 410AD when the Romans abandoned England to its fate it would eventually become a part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia with the town functioning as an administrative centre before changing hands on a number of occasions during the 9th century, switching between Dane and Saxon rule resulting in what is believed to be a relatively unique mix of town names with both Old English and Old Danish origins.

In 1215AD Brackley in Northamptonshire played host to the Barons, led by Robert Fitzwalter, who renounced their fealty to King John following his disastrous wars in France and the collapse of the Angevin Empire, so beginning the Baron’s War and ultimately the sealing of Magna Carta.

On 10 July 1460 the first engagement in a war that would come to be known as ‘the war of the roses’ took place outside and to the South of the walled town of Northampton. A Yorkist force under the Earl of Warwick (also known as Warwick the Kingmaker) approached the defensive encampment of the Lancastrian King Henry VI in the grounds of Delapré Abbey, Northampton, via the same London Road. The battle itself would be held on the site of a ridge and furrow field system farmed by the locals, overlooked by the hill on which the Eleanor Cross stands.

In spite of the superior Lancastrian defensive position, lining a river that still runs through the grounds of the abbey today, the encounter was short. This was due, in part, to the failure of the Lancastrian guns to fire (possibly due to a separation of the constituent components of the gunpowder during travel) and, more significantly, the duplicity of Lord Grey of Ruthin and the men under his command who laid down their arms and allowed the Yorkists to enter the king’s camp, even helping them cross the river itself. King Henry was captured and several leading Lancastrian noblemen were killed.

In the ensuing attempt to escape the overrun encampment, many Lancastrian soldiers, who had been told that they would not be entitled to a Christian burial, drowned as they made to swim across the rain-swollen River Nene.

This weekend we loaded up the car and headed out on a trip to Northamptonshire to visit Delapré Abbey, not far from Northampton town centre itself. Having been there previously for a battlefield tour delivered by the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society we were familiar with the area however the reason for our visit this time was to participate in an event, ‘The Not So Civil War’. This event was run by the English Civil War Society, more specifically by ‘Colonel Nicholas Devereux’s Regiment of Foot’ with assistance from the ‘Marquess of Winchester’s Regiment’, two English Civil War re-enactment groups, Parliamentarian and Royalist respectively.

Not long after arriving we were transported back in time, the camp hangers-on were busily preparing food for the regiment, the smell of wood-smoke hung lazily in the air, curling up from the fires tended by well-padded cooks making simple broths of meats and vegetables. Their barefooted children, dressed in humble, rough-spun, frocks and pinafores ran around chasing after wolfhounds and the armed men, arrayed with muskets and pikes, drilled on the South Lawn. I quickly set to work; my role as an undercover Royalist was to quiz the Parliamentarian forces that had been assembled there, to gain an understanding of their reasons for dissension and to take down names that might be delivered to the King in order for him to exact divine retribution upon the rebellious cads who so brazenly paraded their treason in public.

As it turns out, those present were actually a rather pleasant bunch, even if I couldn’t quite convince them that they’d entered the war on the wrong side. Now out of character I perused the stalls selling hand dyed wool or offering renaissance dance lessons accompanied by the lilting melodies of period music played on beautiful instruments. I was, rather unhelpfully, informed that as a gentleman I would be expected to be able to play an instrument or I would not be thought of as particularly cultured. My wife laughed, thanks dear.

After beating a hasty retreat from a chap who was cheerfully detailing a colourful account of 17th century battlefield triage, illustrated by a selection of wickedly sharp blades (fortunately he stopped short of asking for a volunteer), we finally came to a stall with a grizzled re-enactment veteran who was using Peter Dennis and Andy Callan’s ‘Wargame the English Civil War 1642 -1651’ paper-stock soldiers to demonstrate how a regiment of around a thousand men, comprised of musket and pike, might form up for battle. Being a bit of a wargamer myself I was familiar with the massed pike to the centre and musket to the flanks but it was interesting to discuss more of the intricate details of changing pike to musket ratios during the period and where the best man of each file would be stationed, second best, recruits and so on.

This led to his remarking that this presented a certain difficulty for re-enactment groups as they often lacked the numbers to form the 6-8 man deep file common to the period and consequently it made training new members for re-enactment more complicated than it might otherwise be. Of the 36 musketeers that they had been expecting for the day, the group had only managed 17. Old hands like this chap, who had given up portraying a soldier after 40 years, were hastily ‘shanghaied’ at the last minute into the dirty job of musket drill demonstrations.

Naturally this got me thinking about Burke and his concept of ‘little platoons’ and also of the duty of obligation owed by the present to the past for the benefit of the future. I do believe that the Great British tradition of the association or of the society is a dying institution, the advent of modern methods of communication and the deeply fractured and atomised nature of the modern individual has resulted in a declining interest in these, sometimes ancient, institutions. I can attest to this in the sphere of wargaming in particular where a majority of those involved are often advanced in years but this is also something I’ve witnessed in, for example, photography clubs that I’ve been a member of as well as the women’s choir that my mother-in-law and sister-in-law infrequently attended prior to covid.

I worry that once these are gone they will not return and with them will die a spirit of cooperation and preservation gifted to us, in my belief, by the industrious victorians who first found themselves presented with the time to engage so energetically with their heritage. I think this is a process that will inevitably have been exacerbated not only by the effects of covid itself but also of the lockdown put in place by the government to curb its effects. Stalwart members may have passed on in the worst cases or else simply fallen out of habits that they don’t have the will or energy to recommence.

This is something that has been on my mind for some time and it is why, in the midst of government lockdown over the last year and a half I committed to do my part to stall, or at the very least to decelerate, this decline and made the effort to join a history society. As a result I have enjoyed meeting people for what have been fantastic lectures by some wonderful historians from across the country on a great wealth of subjects and it has helped rekindle a love of history and of my heritage. I must say that after today’s display I’m inclined to think that I might find myself embroiled with another society in the form of one of these magnificent re-enactment groups.

A local society, club or association is something I’d encourage all like-minded individuals to become engaged with in some capacity or another, either as a passive observer or, far better, as an active contributor. Personally for me my interests are largely historical and so I will now be looking closely at ‘The Kings Army’, a collection of ECW reenactment regiments loyal to the Crown, with a view to joining in, at least once, with one of their events. For you it might be a ramblers society, a painting group or a reading club that would be your cup of tea. Whatever it might be, take a moment this weekend to seek it out. You are likely the lifeblood that this group needs to continue, to carry forward its own legacy to be enjoyed by the next generation. Take your children along, get them involved, let them know that there is more to life than playing computer games with nameless strangers and scrolling instagram. Build and be part of these ‘little platoons’.