On 6-8 July we held the inaugural Albion Cup – a multi-discipline tournament event that we hope to reproduce each year. We had seventy attendees from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway and Italy. The weekend was blessed with beautiful sunshine and we picked a very pleasant venue in Belmont School, a beautiful site snuggled in the forests of the Surrey Hills in Holmbury St Mary near Dorking. Attendees were able to camp on site or sleep in the hall which made everything very manageable.
The tournaments began on Saturday with open longsword, followed by women’s sword & buckler and then rapier & dagger. There was a good showing of women in the S&B tournament and the quality of the fencing in all competitions was brilliant.
The first day ended in the form of entertainment with the “Renaissance Fencer” matches: a series of showfights between preselected pairs of fencers who train in multiple weapons. Each pair had to
fence continuously with matched weapons for two minutes each with a 1 minute break in between. The order was longsword, then sabre, then rapier & dagger and ending with sword & buckler. We had 4 pairs who took part including instructors Fran vs Emilia, and Piermarco vs Håvard Eidheim from Norway. It was a gruelling but fun spectacle and the crowd cheered on all the participants.
After a night of celebrations in the nearby pub, the second day picked up the packed schedule once more with sabre, then smallsword, open sword & buckler and women’s longsword – again with a very healthy number of participants which is encouraging to see. The quality of the fencing throughout was excellent, and we began the prizegiving with a traditional ‘Fechtschule’ where the participants each voted for the best technical fencer of the weekend. The clear winner was Håvard , and his prize was the coveted ‘Albion’ bastard sword: forged and sharpened by our platinum sponsors Balefire Blades.
The School put in a brilliant performance, in terms of competition, organisation and volunteering. Thank you to all that took part. Notable competitors are Adrian who climbed 26 places on HEMA Ratings, winning all his pool matches in rapier & dagger and sword & buckler. Another climber is Mikolaj who climbed a staggering 440 places in sword & buckler, also winning all of his pool fights. SotS Oxford leader Emilia climbed 22 places in women’s longsword to 25th, and Katie climbed an impressive 47 places, also in women’s longsword.
We take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our participants, we wouldn’t be able to put on such a big event without you. We especially thank our hard working volunteers, some of whom travelled great distances simply to donate their time and make the Albion Cup such a great success, and some who couldn’t event be there but put in the organisational hours just to make it happen. With gratitude to Jon Rolph, Sue Kirk, Alejandro Cortes Garcia, Chris & Alicia of Balefire who also acted as armourers for the event, James Wiggins, Artur Agustyniak, Stewart Hotston, Jay Maxwell, Richard Hughes, Emma Smith, Emma Holding, Jon Middleton, Josh Davis, Alexander Davis, Chris Bear, Dan Skellon and many more.
The organisational committee also included Pim, Fran, Masha, Matt, Adrian and Sasha.
And of course, the wonderful prizes and donations from our generous sponsors are what added sparkle to this fun event:
Special thanks to Enrica Angiolini Art for designing our logo.
The tournament finalists were as follows:
Women’s sword & buckler
1st Maria Makarova The School of the Sword
2nd Fran Terminiello The School of the Sword
3rd Hanne Eik Pilskog Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Women’s Longsword
1st Tosca Beuming De Zwaardkring
2nd Emilia Cecylia Skirmuntt The School of the Sword
3rd Michela D’Orlando Ordine delle Lame Scaligere
Open sword and buckler
1st Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
2nd Jay Maxwell The School of the Sword
3rd Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Open Smallsword
1st Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
2nd Rowan Skilbeck Waterloo Sparring Group
3rd Jay Maxwell The School of the Sword
Open longsword
1st Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
2nd Thomas Couturier La Salle d’Armes – Escrime Ancienne: SA-EA
3rd Federico Dall’Olio La Salle d’Armes – Escrime Ancienne: SA-EA
Open sabre
1st Tim Fuke London Longsword Academy
2nd Rowan Skilbeck Waterloo Sparring Group
3rd Pedro San Miguel Schola Gladiatoria
Open rapier and dagger
1st Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
2nd Alexander Makarov The School of the Sword
3rd Matthew Crane The School of the Sword
Best technical fencer overall – as voted by all attendees:
Håvard Lund Eidheim Fekteklubben Frie Duellister
Well done to all the finalists!
Thanks to Richard Hughes for the photos.
