Old soldiers to set up camp at hall for re-enactment weekend

The Tower Hamlets Trayned Bandes will stage drill displays, musket firing and pike manoeuvres at Burton Agnes Hall throughout Saturday and Sunday July 9 and 10, from 11am to 5pm each day.

The grounds of the Elizabethan mansion will also be the setting for a 17th century living history camp, which will seek to entertain and educate visitors about life during the English Civil War through portrayals of soldiers and civilians.

The group recreate the civilian militia who guarded the Tower of London and fought on the side of Parliament during the war, while also giving representations of other units such as the New Model Army and Scots Covenantors.

Hall owner Simon Cunliffe-Lister said: “This re-enactment weekend is a wonderful opportunity to see how our ancestors in past centuries might have lived, and how they experienced the Civil War. The Tower Hamlets Trayned Bandes are fantastically realistic – you might almost forget that we are actually in the twenty-first century.”

Visitors will also be invited to stroll around the courtyard shops and buy plants propagated from the hall’s award winning gardens.

The hall, between Driffield and Bridlington, was built between 1598 and 1610 by Sir Henry Griffith and has been described by Simon Jenkins, author of England’s Thousand Best Houses, as “the perfect English house”.

The next event it will host will be the Burton Agnes Jazz and Blues Festival over the first weekend of August.