Keep Your Powder Dry

Rather than cluttering up my ECW Travelogue guide to Cropredy Bridge, I decided to post a second entry which is purely devoted to my snaps from the Sealed Knot's Cropredy 375 event. The Living History camp...   The battle...       If you enjoyed reading this, or any of the other posts, please consider  supporting  the blog.  Thanks .  

The latest instalment of  'the travels of William Waller's Southern Association' visits Cropredy (pronounced cropper-dee): home to folk festivals (of the singing with one finger in their ear variety), a haunt of hippies in the '70s looking to hang out with Fairport Convention (some are still there, so don't be at all surprised to see Gandalf look alikes roaming the area), and 375 years ago a little dust up in the First Civil War. You'll be pleased to hear that there is still a bridge, but not the titular 'bridge', it having been rebuilt and then widened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries The Royalists had suffered several defeats in early 1644, Nantwich, Cheriton, and were now besieged in York (the Scots having arrived on the scene to bolster the Parliamentarian forces). A beleaguered Charles was holed up in Oxford. The Sealed Knot march across Cropredy Bridge On Saturday, 29 June, Charles headed north along the eastern bank of t...

The William Waller campaigns continue...a saga of manoeuvre and counter manoeuvre. Background After the Battle of Alton (and the taking of Arundel by Waller), the two armies went into winter quarters. Hopton overwintered in Winchester where he was joined by a contingent of the King's Oxford Army under the command of the Earl of Forth. Forth had superiority but Hopton retained operational command (on account of Forth having bad gout). Waller's Southern Association was bolstered by a cavalry brigade from the Earl of Essex's Army, under the command of Sir William Balfour. In March, Parliamentarian forces began to muster near Petersfield, with a view to march on Hopton. Hopton had news of the movements of the London Brigade and marched to intercept them. the London Brigade got wind of the Royalist advance and withdrew to join Waller. View of the battlefield from the memorial, Cheriton Wood on the left. Waller marched to Alresford in order to cut off Hopton...