We had a great turnout for freeplay in Godalming on Sunday, where people practiced with sword & buckler, rapier & dagger and smallsword. The next freeplay session will be on the 29 April in Reading. Freeplay is included in monthly subscription and is open to studenti and above.
You may have noticed a flurry of activity on our page recently, that is because we are hosting the inaugural Albion Cup – a multi discipline tournament event on 7-8 July, in Dorking Surrey.
We hope to attract a large number of attendees, from the UK and the international HEMA community as well. Weapons featured are: rapier & dagger, longsword, sword & buckler and smallsword. There will also be two women’s competitions: longsword and sword & buckler.
In addition, by way of entertainment on the Saturday evening we will hold several “Renaissance Fencer” bouts – these are matches between preselected fencers to show good all round skill in four of the main disciplines.
Watch this space for more news, registration will open very soon.
Congratulations to our new studenti who passed their safety test last night in Reading: Jim, Daniel and Emma. They are now able to participate in freeplay, and are full members of the School. We wish them every success in their careers with us.
The Safety Test is an integral part of our curriculum, where we test candidati (new recruits) for their technical knowledge and application, as well as their ability to practice fencing safely. Once passed a student then becomes a full member of the School.
This was the last night of the current teaching block and we enjoyed a very full class.
Kasten took the Bolognese group through tactics in single sidesword, whilst Lynette finished her course on at Fabris’s proceeding with single rapier.
Next week will be a “Technical Tournament”, and the week after will be a Sparring Night. May heralds the beginning of our next Beginner Course, Emilia’s course on single rapier and Jack’s course on the Spadone.
Senior Sots instructors Fran and Lizzie held this event for its second year in Godalming on 17 & 18 March. It was attended by over forty women – several Sots members among them – and all the classes were led by female instructors, including Emilia Skirmuntt who has taught as a guest instructor in Reading (and will soon be teaching rapier again in Godalming) and Maria Makarova: also from the School. Other instructors were Steph West from 1595 Club and TerryAnn Towers St Amand, who led the warm up and cooldown. There were classes in Fiore Longsword grapples, Saviolo Sidesword and Italian rapier.
The second day started with a Q&A panel with the instructors, chaired by Fran, followed by a novice tournament using boffers, and a steel tournament. In each competition there were randomly chosen but paired weapons.
Next year’s event is already in the can, with ten instructors and speakers! Watch this space.
The inaugural English Sidesword Open took place in Godalming on the 24 and 25 February. We had so much fun running it and taking part that plans are already in afoot for ESO2019: it’s going to be even bigger and better!
The event consisted of workshops and tournaments: we were honoured to have guest instructors in the form of Devis Carli and Pietro Bruzzi from Sala d’Arme di Achille Marozzo in Italy, Rob Runacres from Renaissance Sword Club UK, Aaron Coode from KDF Bournemouth UK, and Chris Chatfield from 1595 Club Brighton UK.
There were six tournaments in all, a nylon and a steel stream in single Sidesword, sidesword and dagger and Sidesword and Rotella. Thanks to a dedicated army of volunteers largely made up of Sots members, we were well staffed and everything ran on time. We saw some beautiful fencing throughout the weekend.
Valentine’s day didn’t keep our students way from Godalming on Wednesday night with two streams of training on offer.
Lizzie & Kasten took the Bolognaise group through defending ready for an attack in sword & buckler, whilst Lynette looked at proceeding with rapier.
Sunday sparring was in Hawley this week with a number of students turning up looking to get in some extra practise.
These free sessions for students who have passed their safety test allow them to get in some valuable sparring time, practising the techniques they’ve learnt in our training sessions. It allows them to spar with people they don’t normally train with as well as try out some fun weapon combinations that are not part of our curriculum.
Students gathered last night our regular Wednesday night training session in Godalming.
Fran taught a class on sword & buckler and Adrian continued his introduction to rapier.
Our Reading students met up last night for our regular training sessions, with three streams of training on offer.
Matt & Andy continued working with the beginners on their introduction to swordplay, James taught sidesword and Christophe took the rapier group.
