What C.H.E.S. Do.

What do Historical Re-enactors do?

The short answer is that they re-enact history.

 Of course there is a lot more to it than that.

Re-enactment is a hobby that can encompass a wide range of interests and skills. Many people simply take part in re-enactments because they enjoy the excitement of fighting with metal weapons, others enjoy demonstrating their craft skills or researching the period of history that they are enacting. Most people also enjoy the social element of historical re-enactment, meeting people from a variety of backgrounds and from all over the country who all share a common interest.

Historical enactment can encompass any or all of a selection of skills and disciplines, from the obvious ones such as combat and craft skills, to such things as role-play and communicating with the public.

In short, Historical re-enactment, is a hobby from which you can get as much or as little as you want, you can simply come along for the fight, or you can become involved in all aspects of creating a historical show, and presenting it to the public.

The activities that the Colchester Historical Enactment Society stage can be divided loosely into two sorts, Living history and combat.

LIVING HISTORY

Depending on the location, historical period, and the sort of event that we are staging, our living history display generally consists of a recreation of a period encampment where we display the clothing, artifacts and activities of the time in history that we are demonstrating.

Our displays are usually augmented with a number of boards which are used to explain the items or activities on view, experience has shown that this provides members of the public with background information, and encourages them to ask questions about the display.

Any member who has a craft or a skill that is relevant to the historical period being displayed, is encouraged to exploit these skills by creating a demonstration that they can use at events. Or they can learn new skills from existing members, such as bullet casting or tablet weaving.

COMBAT

Members of C.H.E.S. hold regular training sessions to ensure that anyone who wishes to take part in our combat displays reaches an acceptable level of safety before they can take part in our combat enactments. These sessions usually start with teaching basic sword, and sword and shield techniques. Once a new member has become competent in these basic techniques, they then progress to a series of training exercises, varying from single combat practice, with a selection of different weapons and shields, to combat "games" such as the Bridge or the Circle of Treachery.

At shows, C.H.E.S. combat displays usually consist of small combats such as duels, training exercises, or weapons demonstrations. This is because C.H.E.S. is a relatively small group. However, the society often takes pat in bigger events  organized by larger groups, and often invites other groups to our events in order to provide a bigger and better display.

Although C.H.E.S. enacts more than one historical period, new members should not feel obliged to invest in the kit for more than one period if they do not wish to. nor should they feel that hey have to attend EVERY meeting and event that we hold. Enactment is a hobby, and we understand that our members do have other commitments. Our only requirement is, that new members wishing to take part in combat events attend enough of our practice sessions to achieve an acceptable level of skill before taking part in a combat show. 

In addition to the shows that we stage throughout the summer, C.H.E.S. members also enjoy many social activities, As well as training sessions and the regular Wednesday meetings, the society also organizes events such as museum visits, kit making sessions, and trips to the cinema to see the latest historical epic movie.