HUGE crowds gathered in the town centre in Marlborough to see history turned back more than 360 years at the weekend.
The English Civil War Society spent the weekend in the town with a period camp in the Priory Gardens.
On Saturday and again on Sunday its members re-enacted the Civil War battle of Marlborough in which King Charles' troops stormed the town that had been supporting parliament.
Cannon and musket fire echoed back from the buildings in the High Street as the two sides met in clash that centuries ago was largely bloodless. In December 1642, the only two fatalities were two countrymen who were killed as they fled from the town after it was taken.
In the re-enactment, the king's men stormed down into the town from alleyways leading from what is now The Common. Their cries of 'A Town. A Town for King Charles' could be heard the length of the High Street.
The royalist troops had the advantage of superior strength and of mounted soldiers and cannon.
If the weekend's reconstruction was anything to go by the sound of the cannon alone would have daunted the local fighters.
On both Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon large crowds of perhaps 3,000 or more assembled to watch the battle ensue.
Musketeers, pikemen and cavalrymen and women battled it out but the superior strength of the better-armed king's men meant the fighting was soon over.
The Parliamentarians were clapped in irons and taken away to Oxford to gaol.
In the Living History encampment in the Priory Gardens, members of the English Civil War Society lived the sort of life their forebears 350 years would have experienced.
Pikemen stood on guard with their 16 feet long weapons and musketeers cleaned their matchlock muskets ready for the later mock battles.
The members of the society travelled considerable distance to be involved, some from as far as Norfolk and Yorkshire.
Soldiers could be seen resting and enjoying refreshment in the camp tavern, The Crippled Cock.
Meanwhile food of the period was being cooked over open fires with a rabbit being broiled and a boiled bag pudding rather like a fruit cake being prepared.
In the barber's shop, complete with red and white striped pole, the camp's barber-surgeon Rory McCready, from Christchurch, in Dorset, was available for trimming hair and whiskers, letting blood or carrying out any surgery required.
School children in particular were fascinated by the display and the opportunity to handle the sort of weapons that were used in the Battle of Marlborough.
On Sunday all the mayors of Wiltshire towns as well as the city of Salisbury were invited to join in a civic parade through the town to the College Chapel for a service of thanksgiving at which the Bishop of Ramsbury, the Rt Rev Peter Hullah, gave a humorous but thought provoking address.
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