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Sean Moxom-Wylde

Pub landlord, 30

‘I’m brand new to this hobby. On my stag do, a group of us went to a medieval event and watched people re-enacting a fight. Immediately, my brother, who was my best man, said: ‘We need to do this.’ So we found a group that wasn’t too far from where we live and that was it: we were in. You can so easily get engrossed by it, it’s so addictive.

‘Being away from modern technology and not having a mobile phone for the weekend is actually quite glorious. It’s bare bones. You don’t need your phone, you don’t need your money and all the luxuries. You look around here, there’s nothing in sight that’s modern and we enjoy it.’

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Natalie Thompson

Business support officer, 29

‘The kids who come to watch the re-enactment are mostly into the weaponry, but they’re shocked when they come to the living history camps and see so many foods they recognise.

‘Usually I cook a stew or a pottage, which is a bit like porridge but with barley instead of oats; sometimes we do meat on the spit, flatbreads or oatcakes. It’s very different to a normal kitchen: you can’t control the temperature and you can’t just walk away. Luckily I have a lot of guys around who can chop the wood for me.’

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Autumn McKimm

Schoolgirl, 10

‘It’s amazing and fun and interesting. We learn a lot about the different kinds of swords and weapons they had back then. We do archery on top of a hill and sword fighting.’

Autumn’s parents, Lorna and Stuart, add: “This is probably our 10th year coming here. Autumn started as a baby in a basket so it’s kinda strange to see her now, running around like a loon. She used to have an authentic rag doll she’d carry around, because you can’t have modern toys when you’re re-enacting.”

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Raffi Thomas

21

‘Today I’m going under the name Ljot Ketil Bjǿrnson. It’s a real name from the period. Ljot means ugly. I chose the name before I knew what it meant. Ketil Bjǿrnson means son of the helmet bear, so actually it’s quite appropriate because I studied history at the University of York and ended up writing my dissertation on Anglo Saxon helmets in poetry.

‘Back in 1066, people didn’t really write directly about warfare, they tended to write poetry that told you more how it felt. When you read Anglo Saxon poems, you find their sense of humour and the things they enjoy are very similar to ours today. It’s a window into what life might have been like.

‘The Bayeux Tapestry is also a wonderful resource because it shows you what people were wearing at the battle. We think it was stitched by English nuns about 20 years after the battle. It depicts the events leading up to it, and the battle itself, but it very abruptly finishes and we can never really know why. Maybe the money for the tapestry ran out. For a long time, it was just left sitting in a church in a box because people didn’t realise its significance.’

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David McNichol

Security guard, 43

‘I chose to be a slave for the battle. Normally I’m a warrior, but everybody is a warrior or the wife of a warrior, even the craftsmen are all middle class or upper class. So I did a bit of research in the Domesday Book and found out that anywhere up to 10% of the population were slaves – actual human cattle.

‘The guys here are the closest friends I’ve got, though we don’t meet up often enough. For some events we get expenses paid, but that’s all. The vast majority of us are here simply for the love of it.’

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Jane Richardson

Disability learning support practitioner, 55

‘You don’t need a formal education to learn about history. Probably 90% of us are not formally educated but you just pick it up as you go along. I was teaching someone about the word hostage the other day. It used to mean taking someone into your household and looking after them well, as if they were one of your family – but they’d also be keeping them there for their own security, as a form of ransom.

‘I’ve been doing re-enactments since 1985, so it’s really under my skin. I’m the group leader and seeing people come off the battlefield with so much adrenalin – for me, it’s like enjoyment by osmosis.’

Re-enactors recreate the Battle of Hastings in front of a huge crowd at the English Heritage site. All photos by Jonny Weeks for the Guardian

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Patrick and Romane Fornage

Father and daughter, 30 and two

‘We come from Lyon in France, but we wanted to be Saxons for this battle because it doesn’t matter who you are in real life or where you come from, what matters is the thought process and trying be historically accurate in what we recreate. We’re trying to be people of a certain place and a certain time.’

Patrick’s partner, Layla Haffer, pictured in the yellow headdress below, adds: ‘We’re not really craftsmen, but we made the stools and the awning and our clothes ourselves. Our group is all about fighting and we also like camping. We like camping historically and the hardship that comes with it. We’re not glamping!’

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Courtney Clark

Restaurant worker, 20

‘The main lure of re-enacting is that I get to be myself. In modern life, I’m pinned down by expectations about being a woman and looked upon as weird. As a re-enactor, I fight and play with crossbows. It’s very liberating.

‘I normally do medieval re-enactments with my partner. It’s through this that we grew closer and I moved to live in Battle. I can walk to this site to re-enact here.’

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Dan Shadrake and Kerry Ballard

Historian and author, 52; satellite engineer, 55

Dan Shadrack says: ‘I was one of the advisers on Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator. Obviously, one has to compromise when one works on any project like that, because if you saturate it too much with pure history then things don’t flow nicely. On a film set, things have to look good, so for instance, the Roman standards they carry are much bigger and more spectacular than the proper ones.

‘We have to admit there are huge gaps in our information and everything we do as re-enactors is an interpretation. We don’t have a time machine. We can’t say ‘it was definitely like this’, all we can say is ‘this is our interpretation’.

‘When we’re here for English Heritage, we try to make things as accurate as possible, so everything we’re wearing is accurate for the time. I’m wearing riveted chainmail, the helmets are steel, everything’s padded with sheepskin. The only thing I haven’t done to be totally authentic is take the fillings out of my teeth.

‘Doing re-enactment makes you admire and respect the people of that time. We’re 21st-century people with our flabby 21st-century bodies, and here we are trying to emulate 11th-century people. We don’t have the core strength that our ancestors would have had. People in the original battle were tough. And it wasn’t a short battle, it was an all-dayer.’

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Duncan Richardson

56

‘My wife describes my hobbies as: hitting people, hitting people, hitting people and hitting people. I used to practise Kendo, Japanese sword-fencing, in a church hall in Gillingham, and one day a big hairy guy said to me: “What’s going on in there then?” When I showed him, he told me he did sword and shield combat. He had long red hair down to his bum, so I said: “What are you then, a Viking?” He said he was, and I’ve been doing re-enactments ever since.

‘You get the battlefield buzz when you’re fighting. The fighters in 1066 would definitely have had to get themselves psyched up for near-certain death. Luckily I didn’t die today – I ran away!’

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Maiken Lykke Bagley

Exam invigilator, 45

‘A few years ago, I was in the pile of Saxon re-enactors that die early in the battle. You’re told to die in a pile because otherwise the horses will step on you. You can actually feel the ground moving as they come up, it’s unnerving. You get a tiny smidgen of a feel for what it was like to stand on a real battlefield. You know there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

‘In 1066, women were not trained as professional soldiers. Both sides were Christian and a woman’s role was not on the battlefield. As re-enactors there are a lot of women who enjoy taking part, so we adopt male roles and wear warriors’ outfits.

‘In the original battle they had about 1,000 archers here, mainly on the Norman side. That’s who I represent today. We’re lobbing the arrows up, shooting into the masses and hoping to hit something. If you look up, it’s dangerous. It’s disputed whether King Harold was hit in the eye with an arrow, but it seems like quite a good story, so that’s what we do every year.’

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Elidir McKimm

Schoolboy, 11

‘Sometimes I’m allowed to put on my mum’s helmet and train with a sword and learn “the eights”, where you block and defend and attack.’

Elidir is Autumn’s brother. His father, Stuart, says: “When the kids are play-fighting with their swords, it’s quite authentic, because they’re learning to fight like children would have done back then. I got into it when I went to a show as a kid – it was my dream to run away with the Normans.”

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Johnathen Everett

Nuclear project engineer, 23

‘Time Team did a dig here a few years ago and all they found was re-enactors’ lost items, pendants and things. That’s how they found out this wasn’t actually the 1066 battlefield. The roundabout around the corner is where they now reckon the actual battle was. But the abbey was built here to commemorate the battle so everyone thought this must be Senlac Ridge.

‘I’ve been doing this 10 years. When I opened a Facebook account, someone I knew from school sent me a message asking if I wanted to hit people with swords? I said, ‘oh alright then.’ I’ve been coming back ever since. We’re all a bit mad playing dress-up in a field. I really enjoy the companionship of it. Before you know it, it’s 4am in the morning and you’re sat around the campfire and everyone’s giggling.’