Leeds
Royal Armoury Visit 2nd May 2008
We started off on a two hour trip to Leeds to visit the Royal Armoury at 8:00am.
We were quickly taken to our first activity which was trying on different soldiers armour from the English Civil War. I got to try on a full suit of an average pike man’s armour which was incredibly heavy and consisted of a breast plate which had annoying leather straps that dug into your shoulders, a simple sword, and a nap sac for food, a water bottle and an annoying helmet. The pike men were also given a 16 foot pike which was extremely heavy; the pike men often sawed a few feet off to make them lighter. The pike men had also been supplied with a neck guard but they often threw them away because they were very awkward.
We could also try on musket, cavalry and princes armour. The musketeer’s armour was basically a coat, a hat with a bill and a heavy musket. Cavaliers wore buff coats which were made of leather and stopped them from being slashed at by a sword even though they could be stabbed, a light helmet, two pistols and an expensive sword. The princes wore very fine clothes decorated with bright colours and gold lace.
The next activity we saw was the falconry display which was very interesting although it didn’t relate to the English Civil War. They used a Barn Owl called Bungy, a hawk and a cross-breed of two of the fastest hawks in the wild. The owl, unfortunately, flew away while the bird’s keeper was talking about them (they did find him quite a bit later). The hawk was very fast and the keeper let him fly right up above us which was amazing and then he did a demonstration on how they catch their prey. The cross-bred hawk was amazingly fast and could fly at around 120mph. The keeper showed us how fast he was by attaching some food on the end of a rope and swinging it around his head; he then let the hawk play with the food by trying to get it to miss the swinging rope and getting him to swoop time and time again. After the display we ate our lunch by the relaxing Leeds Liverpool canal.
When we had finished our lunch we saw a re-enactment of the battle of Round Way Down narrated by an actor who put on a very good show; his accent sounded very realistic and he brought what could have been a dull lecture into an interesting activity. After this we went into the many hundreds of displays on the English Civil War and filled in our work booklets. There were many statues and pieces of armour which were in great condition.
We had a very good day and we learned a lot about life during the English Civil War and why the Parliamentarians won. There are some photographs taken on the trip below, click on the photograph to enlarge the image
By Alex Ivory, Year 8
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