A Beginners Guide To England's Medieval Festival

This weekend I went to England Medieval Festival, and now it's time to share it with you!

1. What is England's Medieval Festival? 

England's Medieval Festival is basically the UK's version of a ren faire. It takes place during the August bank holiday weekend every year at the beautiful Herstmonceux castle. It is slightly more historically accurate than your typical ren faire, with living history and reenactments being a large part of the festival. Still there are plenty of things to do and enjoy, including food, music, jousting, and a shopping spree in the trader's village.

2. Tickets & Accessibility

Adult day passes to the event cost £14.50, Student tickets £13.50, and under 12's £7.50. You can also buy weekend passes that can include a place in the campsite. There is free and VIP parking which costs £10 but, as we discovered, if you get there up to half an hour after it opens there are still plenty of standard parking spots near the gate.

Most of the festival takes place in a kind of circle around the front of the castle. There is a large space for reenactments in the middle flanked by a food and shopping area on one side, and the trader's village, activities, and Royal Arena where the jousting takes place, on the other. The path down to the festival, the food area, and the reenactments are all connected by a concrete path and there are wheelchair ramps down any steps inside the castle, but the jousting, and traders village are set up in a relatively bumpy field, so that's something to take into consideration.

3. Activities

The festival does not offer programmes so you will have to make do with the blackboards they put up in a couple of places with arrows pointing to different areas and a timetable of events. We managed to catch a gun display, battle reenactment, and the children's battle, although missed the jousting but that was mostly our fault. 

In the activities section of the festival you could do, Archery, fire crossbows, and Axe throwing. You could also sign up to the children's battle if you wanted. A few stalls also offered classes on things such as felting, and making sand figures.

The festival offers lots of food, but there are also places to sit and eat a picnic if you wanted, and whatever you chose to eat there was an abundance of music to accompany you.

I like the way they divided the shopping areas up, on one side with the food were the more LARP-y shops selling costumes, fairy headdresses, steampunk goggles and so many flower crowns. Whilst in the trader's village you could find the slightly more "historically accurate" shops. Although there's not much difference, it was a nice way of dividing things. 

4. Costumes

Before I went to the festival what I was going to wear was one of the biggest questions on my mind. I had no idea how historically accurate or fanciful I could be, or even if I was meant to dress up. About five minutes into the festival my fears where gone, I saw a good mix of people wearing normal clothes, very historically accurate outfits, and a fair share of people in victorian style corsets, mushroom hats, and pirate outfits. Essentially you can wear what you like, but don't feel afraid to dress up, the outfit I was once self-conscious in quickly became super fun as I added, a sword, horns, and a pewter tankard to my ensemble. Not historically accurate at all but wonderful all the same.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this helped. maybe I'll see some of you at next year's festival.