Our displays usually start with a volley of arrows from our longbowmen
whilst the team is introduced.
After the volleys, an ancient recurve bow such as would have been encountered during the
crusades is demonstrated.
This leads on to the story of Richard the Lionheart and how he was killed by a crossbow bolt. At this point our crossbowman describes the weapon and demonstrates its use.
Once the crossbowman has finished, one of the longbow men challenges him to a speed shoot to demonstrate the big advantage that the longbow has over the crossbow.
We then move onto the main part of the display, when all of the longbowmen take to the shooting line and set up stakes before starting to shoot volleys. The commentator will explain how English armies deployed their archers behind rows of stakes to defend against the French cavalry charge. He will then describe the various arrows that were used: Broadheads for unarmoured targets, and long bodkins for chainmail. As he is doing this our archers will be shooting at an unarmoured dummy, followed by a dummy wearing chainmail.
The audience are then asked to imagine the French knights preparing to charge
across the battlefield, as the longbowmen begin shooting at the furthest target. After several
volleys they start shooting at the mid range targets until the
commentator announces that they the enemy are so close that the archers can pick out their individual targets. At this point, all the archers will shoot
a volley of bodkin arrows into a dummy dressed in plate armour.
At the end of the display the archers will take a bow and invite the audience to take a look at our equipment or ask questions about the display.
You can download a short WMV format video of us in action below