49 - Archery - with Andy Rice

People have practiced archery for thousands of years, and it has been part of life at Alnwick Castle since the very beginning, from the death of Harry Hotspur via arrow in 1403, to the local archers gathered by the 5th Earl of Northumberland in 1514, to the modern day when visitors to the Castle can have a go at archery with our trained instructors.

To find out more about archery, our hosts Daniel and Deborah spoke to master longbowman Andy Rice, who told us all about the importance of archery in the medieval period, the equipment archers needed in the Middle Ages, and his own background as a demonstrator of historical archery. We were also joined by one of the Castle archers, Kathryn, who compared notes with Andy on the differences between what she teaches and how it would have been done centuries ago.

We hope you enjoyed this episode, and did not 'play fast and loose'* with the skip button. If you did, please leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts, and remember to send us your Alnwick Castle questions at podcast@alnwickcastle.com for our 50th episode, out in two weeks!

*this will make sense when you hear the episode...