Keep Your Powder Dry

Newark played an important role in the Civil War and has a number of places of interest for the Civil War enthusiast.

First off is the National Civil War Centre, housed in the old Newark museum the buildings have been tastefully renovated. The main gallery is devoted to the Civil Wars, mostly interpretative panels and interactive stuff (and dressing up) for the kids. They have recently acquired 25 pieces of armour which they hope to display in the coming years. This should pad out the collection nicely.



The museum has a new exhibition called 'Cutting Edge' - which has a number of Sir Thomas Fairfax's military items (complimenting his wheelchair which takes pride of place in the medical gallery). There are also a number of other military items on display. This new exhibition now makes the museum somewhere to go out of your way to visit, rather than visiting if you happen to be in the area.



The Centre has developed an app guide to the Newark Civil War trail. Download before y…

The Commandery in Worcester is a magnificent building rooted in the history of the ancient city of Worcester. For the ECW gamer it becomes particularly relevant as Charles II's headquarters during the Battle of Worcester. 
The building has been beautifully renovated, and is approached from the city centre by crossing a bridge which has a balustrade resplendent with pikes, breast plates and helmets.


The galleries were revamped last year, and now tell the tale of Worcester in the Civil Wars more appropriately. 
The galleries don't just tell the story of the building during the Civil Wars but also it's  role in medieval times. 

For the ECW aficionado there are a number of artefacts and interpretive panels, some reproduction uniforms and artillery pieces, as well as some hands on exhibits for the small people. But what really shines out is the beauty of the building itself.

Bank holiday weekends often have a re-enactment society event on, which coupled with a stroll around t…

The mental images we have of seventeenth century dress are invariably of a dashing cavalier, wearing extravagant clothing and an ostentatious feather in a broad-brimmed hat; or a dour Puritan dressed in black and white. A heavily stylised, but very enduring set of images created by the Victorians. But what was the reality?

Some clothing from the time still exists, although this will, by the very nature of things, have belonged to rich owners. It has been suggested too, that due to interest in the civil wars, that these surviving garments have been fancydress-ified to achieve the romantic nature of dashing cavaliers and their ladies.

One example of surviving clothing items  is a royalist officer's sash in the Victoria and Albert museum which has intricate silver/white embroidery.


A quick trawl around the National Gallery throws up a number of useful paintings. There is a gallery of Van Dyck's, showing portraits of Charles’s inner circle: the colours on display clearly shout …

Since I visited both Naseby and Marston Moor it was only a matter of time before I went for the hat-trick and visited Edgehill:  but it is a bit of a trek from deepest darkest Derbyshire. A weekend in London gave me the opportunity to have a detour and a break from driving on the way home.

Sadly there is precious little to see as most of the site is occupied by an MoD site and as such is closed to public access.

The battlefield has it's own website which has a good precis of the events of the battle, not the easiest of sites to navigate - the 'visiting' page is particularly useful as you will find direct downloads to a number of walks around the battlefield, including the Battlefields' Trust leaflet and walk.

There have been a number of recorded ghost sightings of armies fighting, so much so that a Royal Commission investigated in 1643 and the commissioners confirmed seeing two armies battling in the sky. A number of  civilian workers at the MoD site also reported sigh…

A quick thank you to everybody who has popped by to read my inane drivel / look at the pictures. Thank you too for the kind comments here, on forums and via e-mail. Much appreciated.


Here's a  selfie of me dictating this post to my blog assistant.

This blog was meant to be a way of organising my thoughts and ideas, with the bonus that anyone else interested could share in my research / thoughts. So far in it's  first five months just shy of 5000 page views, with two posts clocking up over 200 views each: Naseby Windmill, and Parliamentarian Foot (which staggeringly is only 8 days old). So I'm guessing one or two of you share my interest.

Yet another of my eye candy posts, consider it task avoidance - I'd rather post pretty pictures on the blog than plaster a wall in the kitchen.

My rationale for my regiments of foot can be found here.

Here are the first six regiments of foot, repressed common men press ganged into fighting for an unjust monarch.

Lord Hopton's Regiment


Colonel John Talbot's Regiment


Sir Charles Gerard's Regiment


Sir Henry Bard's Regiment


Lord Percy's Regiment


Sir William Pennyman's Regiment