As the city prepares to host the UK’s largest historical re-enactment this August bank holiday, one Chester couple is making preparations to tie the knot in 17th century style.
Keith Ronald, 56, and Helen Harwood-Smith, 50, are members of the Sealed Knot, Europe’s largest re-enactment society, and are planning to celebrate both their wedding and their hobby with dual ceremonies.
After getting officially hitched on the Friday, their ‘second’ wedding will be a public re-enactment of a 17th century marriage in front of Chester Town Hall as part of The Siege of Chester, a huge free city centre event over the holiday weekend.
Both of them will be wearing outfits handmade by Helen, who is part of a re-enactment tailoring business called The 1642 Tailor. Her friend and business partner, Ian Dicker, will be ‘officiating’ the wedding in his role as a Royalist preacher.
“We were encouraged by our friends and family to have a 17th century wedding because of our hobby, but I didn’t want the actual wedding to be ‘themed’,” said Helen.
“Being in the Sealed Knot and doing ‘living history’ in particular, you get used to doing all kinds of things with the public watching.”
The Siege of Chester will bring Chester’s vital role in the English Civil War to life over the August Bank Holiday weekend (August 29-31), with Chester Racecourse hosting a fascinating historical encampment and massive battle re-enactments on the Sunday and Monday.
Thousands of re-enactors from across the UK will descend on Chester to re-create the Great Siege of 1645-6, when the city was the last great stronghold of King Charles.
Helen and Keith’s wedding will be one of a series of dramatic scenes played out across the city centre on the Saturday, after a march to and unveiling of a plaque to honour the victims of the siege in the Roman Gardens.
The event is being supported by Cheshire West and Chester Council, Chester Racecourse, and Marketing Cheshire. It is being organised by the Earl of Manchester’s Regiment of Foote, a local Parliamentarian regiment from the Sealed Knot.
Keith and Helen, who met at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 and began their relationship two years later, are members of the Prince of Wales’ Company of the King’s Guard, a Royalist regiment in the Sealed Knot that re-enacts Charles I’s personal regiment from the English Civil War.
