Historic Camping

Projects Update

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Ian Piddington

So I have been a bit slack at updating the various projects I have been working on. So here is a high level summary. I’ll try to post some detaisl on some of these in the not so distant future.

Leather work

I’ve worked on a number of things, trying out various techniques and miking stuff I need. This is a shortlist of the things I have made

Dice Cups
Belts
Plague Doctors Mask
Arrow cup – not sure if this is actually historically acurate but it works

Woodwork

I made a medieavl 6 board box under the guideance of Master Edward. THe paln is to make a few more and retire some of our other boxes

Metalwork

I’ve tried a few different things. I made 2 sets of knoves and prickers under hte guideance of Master Edward and I have been doing various pweter castings. Mainly award tokens for the Barony but also trying to make up some molds for belt mounts and the like

Fabric

This is Elyna’s list, She has been slowly working her way through a long list of things

Shirts
Chemises
Braies
Caps
Coifs
A fencing jacket
Kirtles
Veils
A coat

There are probably more items but we can’t remember them all

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St Sebastians 2021

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Ian Piddington

Another year and another St Sebastians event. This year about 90 people
attended the event. It was truly lovely to see so many people enjoying
themselves

While St Sebastians is traditionally an archery focused event, we also had
both heavy and rapier tournaments happening.

The heavy tournament had a random weapon wheel. Each fighter was weapons
were determined by 2 spins of the wheel, one for each hand. There were also
some special weapons, such as a haddock, a broken bottle, rolling pin and troll
club, that added to the mix.

The rapier event was more of a tavern brawl, with overturned tables and
spilt beer to negotiate around.

Both provided a fun spectacle for the audience as well as enjoyment for the fighters.

The archery was also well attended with 21 people shooting in the main
competition and 23 in the archery games. The games were won by the ‘welsh’ team
while the archery was yet again won by Trudy.

As always there was also the St Sebastians game. Master Edward had devised
another fun game for the event, drawing on some of the more interesting themes
from previous years. The prize this year was a hand made oak Canterbury chair.
The game was well played and highly entertaining.

We were also able to hand out a number of awards. Normally we only present
baronial level awards but with eh Crown not being able to travel due to COVID
we are also awarding Kingdom level awards. It was our great please to add 5
people to the ranks of our Alderman, 2 to our Militia, 1 to our Lodeman and to
grant a Freedom of the City. On top of that we were able to present a number of
AoA’s, a Golden Nock, 2 Rowan’s, 2 Silver Pegasus and 3 Star and Lily’s.

It is always a pleasure to see people be recognised for the work they do in
the SCA.

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Pennyroyal Picnic

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Ian Piddington

The Baron and Baroness of Ildhafn invite you to join them for a garbed picnic at the Auckland Botanic Gardens!

Bring your picnic blanket and something for your lunch, something to do,
or simply come along and relax.

Please come along and join us on the 7th of April. This will be a great opportunity to come along and meet members of the Barony, to find out what we do and enjoy pleasant company in the beautiful gardens

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St Sebastians 2018

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Ian Piddington

St Sebastian’s was a special event this year. It marked the 10th anniversary of Ed and Elizabeth running this on their property. As such Ed had made some extra special site tokens, individual pottery cups, for the attendees.

As always there was a game running over the weekend. The prize this year was a crossbow. This was eventually won by William de Cameron.

The main event at St Sebastian’s is the archery tournament.
This year it was broken down into 3 categories, all shot at the same time.

The 3 categories were:-

The Baronial Championship. This is for the best scoring member of the Barony
The Golden Arrow. This is for the highest scoring archer using a longbow
The St Sebastian’s champion. This is for the highest scoring archer regardless of the type of bow used

This year the same person won all 3 categories.

We were also were honoured to have Their Royal Majesties in attendance. Master Edward Braythwayte had been invited to join the Order of the Pelican at St Catherines Faire and this event was the most appropriate for him to be elevated to the Order.

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SCA update

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Ian Piddington

Within the SCA some groups form a Barony. This then requires them to have a Baron and Baroness, appointed by the Crown for the kingdom the barony is in.

The current Baron and Baroness for Ildhafn have served in the role for 6 years and decided earlier this year that they would stand down in November.

Members of the Barony could nominate themselves as potential successors, then a process of questions and polling happen before the Crown make a decision.

We decided that we would put ourselves forward for the position, as did one other couple, and after polling the Crown finally decided that we would become the next Baron and Baroness of Ildhafn.

We officially take over the role at St Catherines Faire in November.

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Mid-Winter Coronation 2017

Posted on July 30, 2017 by Ian Piddington

Within the SCA there are a number of Kingdoms, each ruled by a King and Queen. Every 6 months a new King and Queen are appointed by a heavy combat tournament, with the winner becoming the next Monarch along with his or her consort.

Within Lochac these tournaments take place in May and November. The in July and January the new King and Queen are crowned.

This year the Midwinter coronation was held in the Canton of Cluain, at the beautiful Hamilton Gardens.

At the feast on the Saturday evening w played for a display dance. While we have played the tune a number of times before and we know the dancers very well we hadn’t actually planned any of the performance in advance so we had no pre arranged number of repeats or tempo worked out.

Most of the performance was captured and can be seen here.

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Site Rebuild

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Ian Piddington

Due to a problem with my web-host I have had to rebuild the site. I am trying to migrate the old content back in but it may take a while to clean it all up.

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St Catherines Faire and the Bal d’Argent 2016

Posted on November 26, 2016 by Ian Piddington

The weekend of the 5th and 6th November was Ildhafn’s annual St Catherines Faire. Normally this event runs in December but this year it was in early November. As part of the event, Ildhafn hosted the Bal d’Argent. This is the annual ball of the guild of the Silver Rondel, Lochac’s official dance guild. This meant that most of the weekend was devoted to music and dance practice, with the main ball being on the Saturday night, This was exciting for us as we have been dancing with the SCA for almost 3 years now and we have been hosting the Ildhafn music group for over a year.

The weekend itself was very enjoyable but the really special bit for us was being able to meet the requirements fo the guild in both music and dance. We are now officially Silver Rondels and Silver Semibreves. Wendy also got recognised as a Guildsman of Ildhafn because of the work she puts in with music within the Barony.

As the guild has a charter to promote music and dance across the kingdom we have volunteered to do some work to try and help. This is off the back of something we had already started working on for the local music group but if we can get it going it will become a kingdom resource. The aim is to transcribe the various pieces that are played, re-arrange some of them to suit the instruments that are being played, provide downloadable mp3’s so people can hear what they sound like and play along with their piece or play against the main melody. We have also suggested that there needs to be a kingdom wide discussion forum as different parts of Lochac use different repeat structures, so when travelling to different places it would be good to have a consistent set of music that allows anyone to easily join in with the pieces they know.

While we will be doing this through either the Ildhafn , kingdom or Rondel websites we will also be adding a section here for music.

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Labour Weekend 2016

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Ian Piddington

As we have been doing lots with the SCA here we haven’t done much actual living history camping where you have no modern conveniences. This weekend will be different. Master Ed Braythwayte of the SCA is once again hosting a camp at his property but this year he has deemed that the house is off limits, except for the toilet. There is access to fresh water as well but aside from that everything will be stored, prepared, cooked or worked on in camp. There will be no modern tools, like gas cookers or torches. so it is back to open fires and candle light

We are really looking forward to this as it gets back to the roots of ur camping. Although it has meant a bit of searching around for some of the kit that we don’t often carry with us anymore. I am sure some of it will need a good clean up when we get to site.

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Green Harp Belt

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Ian Piddington

Following on from my post about making new belts for Wendy, see post here, I have finally finished off the green belt with pewter harps.

It took a while to get round to finishing off the dying of the leather, once that was done I fitted all the mounts on and checked it all looked right. At this stage we decided to set the last 5 harps so that ran along the belt instead of across it. This means that when the belt is hanging the harps still are upright.

Once that was all sorted it was just a case of hammering the pins in place to permanently set the mounts in place.

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