Chiltern Open Air Museum, Napoleonic Day
Date: June 1st 2024.
Event : Chiltern Open Air Museum, Napoleonic Day, Napoleonic Day
Location : Chiltern Open Air Museum, Napoleonic Day, Chalfont St Giles, HP8 4AB
The Museum runs a number of activities over the weekends through Spring into autumn, this was the first event I had attended, I found it quite late and it was a last-minute decision to attend.
It was a day where approximately 60 to 70 historical reenactors representing British, french and Prussian forces Provided demonstrations of drills and tactics, and also set up marching camps such that we could wander around and talk to them between other activities.
The British were represented by a detachment from the buffs, the second and third battalion 95th rifles and the French were represented by line infantry drawn from a number of regiments. Depressions provided some small artillery to canon and there were a number of mounted cavalry attending as well approximately eight horses.
The weather was dry and overcast, about 15 to 16°C, it stayed this way throughout the day. As it was overcast lighting was diffused and there were no problems shooting against the light at any time.
I attended for two reasons, one, I was hoping to get some interesting photographs. It’s not a subject that comes up very often and I’ve only shot one event before approximately three years ago at the Royal gunpowder Mills in Walton Abbey. Second reason is I have a keen interest military history, especially the Napoleonic care and it’s always interesting to go along and see something like this firsthand and talk to the reactors. Also rifleman Harris, apologies I forget his actual name, from the TV series sharp, was in attendance to sign an autograph books.
No particular challenges in photographing the events today we were kept behind a roped off area along one side of the field so we were limited as to where we could get pictures from this meant no interesting close-up work or interesting angles. I think everybody had the same type of shot. I did at one point almost get run over by the buffs and I was standing in the area outside the presentation fields taking photographs and turned around to realise they were all marching and they were approximately 5 feet from me before I jumped out the way.
I wasn’t there the whole day, I arrived roughly at the start of the event, and all the forces were doing drills in the main presentation field, marching skirmishing, form from line into square and back again. They were also doing musketry drills pretending to load the muskets presenting the muskets, aiming the muskets and then they all shouted bang together, that was a slight climax.
After a break for a cup of coffee and a sausage roll I had a wander around one of the camps and had a chat with a couple of the reenactors talking about the equipment. The time they put into it having a look at the Baker rifles, this is quite interesting. On returning to the field it was now the musketry practice, where three representative representatives from the rifles the buffs and the french Were down one end of the field. And as per what sharp used to say, a good infantrymen can fly three rounds a minute, that was the objective of this contest. They all had to load prime ram and fire three times. The fastest was the winner. This time they were actually priming And putting black powder into the barrels, so the baskets were going properly bang and I tried to capture a couple of these in my photographs.
This was a last minute decision to attend and turned out to be an enjoyable morning, I think I took some interesting photographs, none competition worthy but it was an enjoyable morning and I picked up the schedule for the rest of the year which includes Saxons versus Vikings, and mediaeval jousting. I intend to return.
No particular lessons to learn to learn photographically from this event, no great masterpieces taken, but I didn’t expect to either.