[Lukasz D Kowal]

Myself with two friends wants to create full contact Medieval group in London.
So far we are just from Poland but we are looking for more people from all around the world which are located in London.
If there is anyone in London who would like to come and train with us or help to organize decent medieval group please drop me an email.
Lukaskowalpl@yahoo.co.uk
Cheers.
Lukasz

[Kel Rekuta]

Good luck with that.

Most of the London area HEMA medievalists train in t-shirts with plastic sword simulators. I doubt you will find them interested in Eastern European "full contact" standards. You might though!

[Brian Robson]

Hi Lucasz,

Good luck, but I'd be surprised if you get much interest. Unfortunately the UK has become so entrenched with overbearing Health+Safety laws over the last 20 years, combined with insurance costs + personal injury claims etc. that most people's initial re-action will probably be sheer horror..

Our group does semi-contact re-enactment combat but unlike many we include headshots. It's amazing how many people involved in other groups here are simply horrified just by this and won't even consider the option of including it. (Despite very good arguments that it's actually safer - but that's another story)

But on the other hand, there once was a full-contact tournament held annually in the UK for a while (I think it was often at one of the main re-enactor markets or events) - but not the eastern European style. I don't know if it still runs, so there may well be a few people scattered around that could be interested. May be wrong, but I think Lancaster Armouries had something to do with running it.

[Lukasz D Kowal]

Hmm that's indeed bad news...
I will need to look into Lancaster armouries then.... as I cannot believe that there wouldn't be even one group in London which would do full contact.
I just have found one group so far but like Kel Rekuta mentioned t-shirts and some plastic swords...
Anyway I don't lose hope yet and thank you for information!
Cheers

[Luka Borscak]

Try to contact this guy, Philip Burthem. I met him in London, nice guy and I believe he mentioned his group does full contact but I'm not 100% sure so better ask him. Very versatile man also.
http://www.philipburthem.com/

[Till J. Lodemann]

Really good luck Lukasz! It would be great if you could start full contact fighting in Britain! Apart from the Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles (England Ireland and Scotland) are the only countries in western europe that don't even have a small comunity of full contact fighters - well apart from what Lancaster Armourie does.

And tell these english reenactors that even the Frenchies do it and they think the British are scared :-D
Maybe that helps...

[Till J. Lodemann]

Here is an Irishman reflecting about starting it in his country:

http://livinghistory.ie/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1876&p=14418

EDIT:: It's an irish forum, but there is also an english forum: http://livinghistory.co.uk/forums/ You could post there, maybe you have luck!

http://livinghistory.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.p...ns#p328939 and http://livinghistory.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.p...ns#p282694 are maybe a starting points.

I am very keen to see how this plays out in England :-)

[Johan Gemvik]

Lukasz, you can try contacting the SCA groups around London.
The local shire is Thamesreach. http://thamesreach.org/

I don't know if any London based SCA fighters will be interested in switching over to steel fighting (not, or should I say not yet allowed in the SCA organisation), but at least they're a bunch you can play with in the meantime and that you have a lot of other things in common with. If you can stand doing rattan club full contact in armour. No t-shirts, though perhaps some duct tape and hidden plastic body armour.

A polish good friend of mine started as an SCA fighter over here in Sweden and when he got back to Poland and started doing the steel full contact he had a lot of use of his old skills, though some things are of course different. Could at least be something to occupy you sundays while you start building your own group.
As you may know the Battle Of Nations USA team is almost all made up of active SCA dukes and knights, though perhaps a special rebel breed of them within the society.

[Zac Evans]

You will find that we in the UK are a varied bunch. We tend to fight in certain ways which are tried and tested to be "safe". We don't necessarily think that is the best way to do it, but we don't travel much, so we just go along with the rules of the group that is closest to us. So don't write of a meeting or group that doesn't seem to do exactly what you want. You will probably find some friends there who will be willing to experiment with your style of fighting, and even if you don't, a little bit of cross training never hurt anyone.

I'm based in greater London, but don't train regularly. Whereabouts in London are you?

[Lukasz D Kowal]

I fully agree with you Zac, in fact we contacted already http://thamesreach.org/ so we will try SCA as every new experience might be useful, but anyway our main focus would be full contact as in the east with the steel swords, as I believe that's how reenactment should be as I doubt anyone used rattan clubs or duck tape in medieval but that's another story.
Anyway I started this topic so hopefully We can find some people which would love to train with us FC and have some fun with it, surely not to criticizes what other people do.

At the moment we do train regular always two of us sometimes three in Wimbledon park on Saturdays mornings.

Zac just as I'm clueless about it are there any events in UK where you are allow to use Steel in FC? or just SCA?
Cheers

[Zac Evans]

Not quite full contact in the way you play it. I live very close to you, and have a group that plays with 15th century rebated weapons. We are a re-enactment group rather than a competitive fight group, but we do have some slightly heavier competitive fighters. Contact me via PM if you're interested in trying some of this out.