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Extant Medieval Resources Page

Last updated on: 3/25/08. Note, every page is complete at this time; if you see any errors, please let me know.

My husband and I went on our honeymoon in March of 2007 to England and Scotland. Of course, we took pictures along the way. Being medieval re-enactors in the SCA, we tried to hit as many medieval museums, churches and castles as we could along the way. I told my husband that we needed to go back and tour for a month or so and write a book called “The Medieval Re-Enactor’s Guide to the British Isles”, because you can’t always find medieval stuff where you expect to find it. I see a month in Britain as a complete tax write-off as a business expense related to my book. He thinks that will never fly with the IRS. We’ll see if I ever manage it.

Anyways, I thought I would share with re-enactors back home in the U.S. some of the fascinating things that we saw while in Britain. There are several representations of medieval clothing that I had never seen before. The people in Warwick’s church must have thought we were crazy, dancing around the medieval tombs like some sort of primitives doing a war dance, whooping and waving our arms around randomly. Stuart found some interesting armor tidbits, along with my clothing surprises (he plans to compile his information into an A&S class, although I am still encouraging him to share it online eventually as well, since we’re not taking our A&S classes on the road across America).

A warning, before you get into the pictures: we had a very hard time getting good pictures. When the really low lighting wasn't slowing the shutter speed down too much, the glare from the glass cases blurred everything. I have sharpened the blurry pictures as best I can, but there will still be noticeable distortion. Please read my comments, as I may explain something that you can't see in the picture, but which I saw quite clearly in person. If you are getting ready to go overseas and plan on taking a lot of museum and church pictures, please invest in a tripod (necessary even for a digital camera, which is what ours is), and take a light source with you: a flashlight is better than nothing in a lot of places. Also, take a ruler of some sort with you so that when you can actually touch something, you can use a ruler (instead of your finger, which is what I used) to show scale

In any event, here are some of our pictures and my comments/analysis.

Medieval and Roman Jewelry
Medieval Fabric Pieces (including knit)
Medieval Shoes, Pattens and Misc. Wearables
14th and 15th Century Clothing (representations only)
Late Medieval Armor (as it relates to fabric only)
Medieval Home Furnishings

Questions about something you've seen? Nebkeriura@juno.com
Please put "medieval" or "SCA" in your subject line, lest I delete and block your e-mail thinking it's spam.

Sir Ian Stuart MacDonald is a 14th century Scottish knight, earning his keep by killing Frenchmen and Eastern European pagans.

Edain ingen Raghailligh ben MacDonald is a late 15th century Irish woman who is obsessed with glass beads. She wears clothes that are 100 years out of date, but that's okay, because she doesn't spell her name the way the heralds registered it either. One thing's for certain about medieval Irish people: they'll do whatever they damn well please, thank you very much.

The two are married, despite the impossible age difference, but that's the Creative Anachronism part of the SCA for you. They'd both like to kill Englishmen, though, so it all works out.