The Earl of Northampton’s
Regiment kicked off 2004 in appropriate fashion – with a party! Ray
and Sandra Costello invited the Regiment in April to their beautiful
house next to a canal near Tring for a training and social weekend.
The training may have been a bit rusty but the party definitely
proved a success! Shortly afterwards was our first Regimental
one-day event, at High Wycombe Museum. In the large garden outside
the museum we set up a small Living History camp, and very quickly
got into the swing of entertaining the many visitors for 6 hours.
Maggie Dixon cooked a great venison stew, Will Hallett got blistered
fingers from training adults and children how to swordfight non-stop
for about 3 hours, and I was taught by Andrew Watson how to play the
blocking board game “Fox and Hounds” in 5 minutes, then spent a few
happy hours thrashing an endless stream of kids at it! Special
thanks go to Andrew Watson of Lord Robartes’ Regiment for attending
with plenty of equipment, including his wonderful puppet show.
A week before the major
muster at Taunton we were hit with the very sad news that one of our
finest members, Kaz Sheehan, had died after a tough battle with lung
cancer. This hit home very hard with everyone in the Regiment and
many people outside. Thoughts immediately turned to her husband,
Jim, who’s many great friends in the Regiment rallied round to offer
him the support he needed. Kaz was a wonderful, dear lady of the
Regiment for more than 7 years who would always offer a cup of tea
and a kind word to anyone passing their caravan. She had been a fine
Gun Captain in our Artillery Company; and so at Taunton, when the
Regiment held a post-battle Drumhead service in driving rain, the
Artillery Company managed to keep their powder dry to fire a shot
from Roaring Meg in her memory. The most touching moment was when,
following the shot, the rain stopped and a beautiful, bright rainbow
appeared on the horizon. God bless you Kaz!
The first weekend in June
heralded our second Regimental one-day event of the season, at the
pretty village of Colne Engaine in Essex. In extremely fine weather
we proved to be a hit at their village fete, with a Living History
encampment, drill displays and a small skirmish. This was also the
first outing for a bunch of kiddie-size pikes that Ray Costello made
for us, which we used to train the local children in the noble art
of pike fighting! All the kids that undertook the training were then
rewarded with a certificate of competency, something that proved to
be a very popular idea. About 15 members of the Regiment attended
the Bosworth muster a month later. Rather than stay on-site we
camped at The Hollybush Inn in nearby Oakthorpe, a frequent haunt of
the Regiment. This was a great idea because, while the rest of the
SK at the Bosworth site were chucked out of the mini beer tent at
10pm on Saturday, we were able to enjoy a pub lock-in until 4am!
Admittedly some of our heads paid for it the next day, and so on
Sunday afternoon you would have found several members of our Pike
(myself included) sleeping off hangovers in authentic fashion next
to John Hancock’s Apothecary stall on the Living History
encampment.
On 17th/18th
July we staged possibly our most successful Regimental display
weekend in many years, at Stockwood Park and Museum in Luton. High
Wycombe and Colne Engaine had been good practice for this one, and
so at Luton we set up a very sizeable encampment in beautiful
tree-enclosed grounds. Thanks to Sandra Costello for her
wool-spinning display and John Hancock again for his Apothecary. We
also had a great display of weaponry, cannon and armour, musket-ball
making, stocks to lock drunk and unruly soldiers in, a
stomach-turning display of surgery, plus some enjoyable little
skirmishes. The civilian women particularly enjoyed beating up Sean
Murray with cooking implements! Kiddie-size muskets also arrived to
complement the kiddie pikes, and so more competency certificates
were issued to Luton’s youngsters. We also offered ourselves as
honour guard for a wedding taking place on the Saturday afternoon at
the same venue, and I think some of the photos probably make it look
like a shotgun wedding! Ray did a wonderful job of commentating on
our drill and skirmishes, and afterwards organised a recruitment pub
night in Luton for 20 potential recruits, most of whom signed up
there and then! A great accomplishment.
The weekend after the
Detling major muster about 20 members took part in an enjoyable
day’s filming for Channel 4 at Kedington Church, near Haverhill in
Suffolk. This was for a docu-drama called “Blood On Their Hands” to
be shown in the Spring. Sean Murray got married to the TV actress
Susannah Harker several times (usurping the original actor!), the
soldiers got to smash up the church, and Bob Scott finally got
permission to shoot his own daughter Miranda, all in the name of
Art, of course!
As the season drew to a
close we had good turnouts at both the Chiltern Open Air Museum and,
of course, our own muster (jointly organised with Pickering’s
Regiment) at Watton in Norfolk. Several new recruits from Luton
joined us at both musters and proved to fit in extremely well with
everyone, thoroughly enjoying themselves. Watton was great fun for
everyone in the SK that attended, and proved that two entirely
unrelated regiments can work closely and successfully together to
run a muster. Thank you Pickering’s! Our Regiment held a big
end-of-season party on the Saturday night on the pretext that it was
the birthdays of about 4 members of the Regiment that weekend. Most
memorable was Will Hallett and Chris Pingram’s joint display of
Pole-Dancing. I’m told that Will is now one of Chris’s 6 wives! The
final triumph of the season was the children of the Regiment winning
Foxy’s field gun run competition against the local Army Cadet force
and the local Fire Brigade. Congratulations girls and boys!
The Earl of Northampton’s
Regiment will be back with plenty of Regimental events in 2005.
See you there!
Dan Howe
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