A horse in colourful medieval garb ambles past, its rider heading off to the first sword fight of the day. From across the fence, music from a group of jitterbug dancers boogie-woogies through the air. And here, in a small field dotted with picnic benches, a group of red-coated cavaliers are preparing for a musket demonstration. “I’ve tried muskets but I close my eyes when I fire,” confides Victoria Barton, who chooses to stand behind the safety line with me as the fighters load and light up their weapons. “Plus,” she says, as their guns fire, clouds of smoke blooming over the soldiers’ heads, “I like my eyelashes.”
When I visit, there are 65 re-enactors here at Chiltern Open Air Museum, a 45-acre site that has hosted the filming of Horrible Histories, Downton Abbey and Masters of the Air. Most of the participants at this weekend event, all re-creating battles or soldiers’ encampments not just from the civil wars but across the ages, are volunteers. They give up their evenings and weekends to breathe life into old stories.
For the last 30 years, Barton and her husband have been part of the English Civil War Society, a leading historical re-enactment group. “I’d heard of re-enactors and thought they were weird,” she confesses. “But then I met them and they were surprisingly normal.” She surveys the array of 17th-century-outfitted adults around her and shifts the weight of the large red drum on her shoulder. “Well,” she gives a half-shrug, “mostly normal.”
Some people join football teams in their spare time. Others form book groups. But if you’re a keen historian, have you ever considered living history? The umbrella term contains a kaleidoscope of forms, including professional actors telling tales, amateur re-enactors flocking to muddy fields and keen volunteers giving guided tours around ruins. All to share their full-bodied, microscopically detailed love of days gone by.
“I’ve got friends here I’ve known for over 40 years,” says Alistair North, dapperly dressed as a civil wars royalist officer. “It gets you out of the house and out with your mates,” agrees a gentle 76-year-old in the Oxfordshire Home Guard Living History Group. But it’s not just retirees who re-enact the past. In the first world war soldiers’ encampment, there is a young man who has been doing this since he was six. North points to a 21-year-old pikeman whose father got him into the hobby. “It’s one of the few areas you see where teenagers and pensioners are genuinely mates,” North says proudly.
A few fields over, Lisa Stanhope – a former police officer and current chair of the Napoleonic Association – is dressed in classic 19th-century womenswear with layers of linen. But there was a time when you’d have been far more likely to find her out on the field in drag, hair tucked behind her ears, as she portrayed a male member of the cavalry in the unit to which she previously belonged. “Lots of women want to portray a woman,” she reasons, “but I wanted to ride my horse with a sword.” While much of re-enactment focuses on battles, Stanhope is insistent that there is no intention to romanticise violence. “This is not about the glorification of war,” she says. “It’s about honouring our predecessors.”
Attitudes towards gender roles in living history wobble precariously from one group to the next, as do opinions about historical anomalies. Some believe that if there’s no evidence for something (or someone) in history, there’s no place for it (or them) in re-enactment. But these sticklers for total accuracy quickly slip into sticky, problematic issues of exclusion. A man dressed as part of the American army in the second world war gives me an even look when I ask about women joining his regiment. “We don’t rewrite history,” he says coolly, swiftly shutting down that line of enquiry.
Everyone else I speak to is far more welcoming. Stanhope, who also participates in Regency dancing in costume, may sniff a little at the inaccurate zips in Bridgerton, but she credits the show with attracting a more diverse audience to what has been, she admits, “a very white, middle-class hobby”.
I get a warm welcome, too, when I pay a visit to the medieval Bodiam Castle in East Sussex where for the last decade Gill Mattock has spent Fridays as a volunteer, giving tours while dressed as a 14th-century washerwoman. She alternates weeks with Dorothy Proietti, her friend of 50 years. Having lived together while they were both at teacher-training college, the 73-year-old women regularly go on walking holidays together. They are currently planning their next trip to Slovenia.
We chat on a little wooden bench nestled in Bodiam’s romantic ruins. Children race around us, eyeing the women in earthy linens who look as if they’ve slipped through a tear in time. Both made their own costumes, with every visible seam stitched by hand. “The National Trust has a 10-yard rule,” Mattock explains: it’s got to look authentic so long as you don’t lean in too close. Proietti wears the traditional leather shoes, with added soles for the relative comfort of the 21st century. Mattock prefers her Velcro sandals. They both take off their metal glasses for photos.
The castle used to have a paid team of costumed interpretation performers, but interest and investment have declined in recent years, with Covid forcing the cuts of what was left; it’s a similar story across the industry. This duo are now part of a team of volunteers who, each week from Easter to October, take visitors on tours around the moat. “I’m afraid we get cold after October 31,” says Mattock. They are the only two who dress up, feeding us little details of the characters they play, created together from researching the castle’s history. “I have what I stand up in, and I sleep in it as well,” asserts Proietti as we set off on the tour. Both carry sawn-off cricket bats – washing bats, they correct me – used to wash whites in urine and lye.
Proietti’s long-held desire to volunteer for the National Trust runs in the family; her aunt has her certificate for 50 years of service. “I used to bring my own children here and it had a magical impact on them,” she says of Bodiam. “Seeing all this and hearing the stories behind it is important to help them realise that history is not static.” Though neither are trained actors, their careers in teaching, Mattock says, have made each a bit of a natural performer.
In their 12 years, they’ve never led a tour together until today. They jostle slightly as they take it in turns while we circle the moat with a small group of families, the 50-year-old fish eyeing us from below. “She’s nicked my bit from up there,” Mattock murmurs as Proietti takes over the tour. “You stole my bit from back there!” Proietti calls back, overhearing. Both drive for roughly an hour from home to get to the castle. Sometimes, no one turns up for a tour. “But if someone at the end says thank you, you’ve made my day,” Mattock smiles at her friend, “you go home thinking that was all worthwhile.” It’s not just history that’s made – or remade – in these fields, castles and odd assortment of stages. Friendships are formed here, loneliness countered, communities built and educations expanded.
I find out more from David Eliot Cooper, the founder of Histrionics, an interactive historical interpretation company who aim to “make the past a playground,” a phrase, he says proudly, that his 12-year-old son thought up. When we share a video call online, a tinny-sounding “hello!” startles me as an armoured man appears on screen, his arms waving and his face obscured with a heavy sheen of silver. Cooper tugs off his helmet, beaming from ear to ear. “There’s no moving anywhere quickly in this,” he laughs, the chain mail and cyberman legs of his 15th-century armour clanking heavily. “The whole thing weighs the same as a medium-sized Dalmatian.”
A history buff who became bewitched with improvisation when training as an actor, Cooper has a Greek helmet in his cupboard and a chest of swords at the bottom of his bed. Putting history onstage at countless heritage sites across the UK, Histrionics present historically-accurate fights, devise workshops and create intimate immersive experiences. “We wear our historic authenticity lightly,” Cooper explains, “so it’s there, but it’s just as important as reaction from the crowd, as comedy and humour.” He dislikes the tricky-to-prove phrase “they never …” The further back in history you go, he says, the more wriggle room there is. Delightfully, he immediately dives into a tangent about Romans wearing socks with sandals.
What do Cooper’s kids make of his job? I ask. “They’re still quite impressed by it,” he nods. Frequently performing at their primary school nearby, he will often be called by the name of a character he’s played instead of his own. He fondly remembers playing Samuel Pepys during the Great Fire of London when his daughter was very young. “I asked at the end if there were any questions,” he says with a grin. “My daughter put up her hand and said, ‘Can Samuel Pepys give me a cuddle?’”
• This article was amended on 12 November 2024 to further clarify that Lisa Stanhope’s comment on the demographics of her hobby referred to its traditional supporter base, which she welcomes as becoming more diverse. It was also clarified that she previously, not currently, rode with the Napoleonic Association’s cavalry. An earlier version referred to her being in 17th-century costume, when 19th-century was meant.
