Committee Meeting - 23rd June 2023
Our latest committee meeting fell between two of our major activities: putting up the banners throughout the town, and the Medieval Festival. The banners have reached a new high (if you’ll pardon the pun), with 200 on display once the final few needing brackets are sorted. This year also represented a new approach to providing banners on properties further out from the centre of the town, where we’ve been keen to meet the appetite from those wanting to display a banner in a way that we can sustain with limited resource. We’ve also refreshed our process for booking, making it much more straightforward for customers to select one, and then for us to capture the information we need to ensure the right kind of pole for the type of bracket on the property – very important when you get to the top of the ladder! Thanks go to our small team of banner hangers who worked through a scorching Sunday to get the vast majority up in one go – that’s an area where we’d really like some additional help on the two Sundays a year when the banners go up and come down, and which requires no historical knowledge at all.
Looking a little further back, our anniversary walk went ahead as planned on 30 April despite changeable weather, and a few ‘no shows’. Whilst we know that individual circumstances will change right up to the day, waiting for those who had not arrived delayed the start for others, so next year we’ll be taking payment in advance to encourage people to let us know if they can’t make it.
The Medieval Festival is just around the corner on 8 and 9 July, with the Schools Day on 7 July. Whilst organising the event itself is down to our colleagues on the Medieval Festival Committee, we’ll again be sponsoring and running the exhibition tent housing the display of Graham Turner’s artwork and stalls from other battlefield societies and non-profit-making organisations. We’ll have a presence there, too, of course, where we’ll be selling a range of Society products and chatting to anyone interested in our work. We’ll also be conducting short battlefield tours for those wanting to see where the battle really took place and give them a bit of background to whet their appetite for the re-enactment in the afternoon.
In the background, we’re continuing to pursue our project to create a second piece of sculpture to complement the Arrivall horses on the roundabout on the southern side of the town. This one is planned to be of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, mother of Prince Edward, the Lancastrian heir to the throne, and present at the battle itself. With the support of the Abbey Lawn Trust, we’re working to secure permission to erect the sculpture in the grounds of the Abbey and we believe it will be a welcome addition to the attractions on view at the Abbey site as well as a poignant memorial to a significant woman in England’s history.
If you’re visiting the Festival, please come along to the stall to say hello – why not bring a friend to join us?