is just what's in front of you… there’s such an adrenaline rush with jousting

Playing the role of a knight… you're not acting, you are being

You've got to learn how to ride a horse

You've got to learn how to wear armour

And then you've got to use weapons

And then you're going to do it on a horse

So you're combining all  these key skills at one point

These are the key skills to becoming a knight

I'm Dominic Sewell of Historic Equitation

History was the only thing I was good at school

It's the one thing that's always  fascinated me and drawn me back

I grew up in a castle town

I played in the castle ruins as a kid 

and it's been an interest that’s  stayed with me literally all my life.

I started off just playing  around with swords for fun

and then I met a group of people doing some medieval banquets in Nottingham

where I met some reenactors who had done these big, large, full scale battles

I was captivated when I first went to my first re-enactment, and the camaraderie amongst people

and how lovely it was to be welcomed in

and it just fired my imagination, fired my love of the 15th century

I remember meeting a friend  of mine at that first battle

Three battles later he rides by on  a horse and I couldn’t believe it

I said: ‘what, you can put the things together 

and encapsulate that wonderful  image of a knight on a horse?’

And so at that point in my mid-twenties I went to learn to ride horses

and I realised very quickly that this is something 

you have to take seriously because  you can’t just play with horses

You have to respect them,  you have to learn about them

and you have to learn how to ride them

So to actually paint this image of a medieval 

knight has taken 25 years to  actually become a reality.

Traditionally, what we find from records is that young men at the age of seven would be

sent to be educated by a knight

He would work in their household as a Page, 

working his way up so he would learn  to serve at tables, serve meals.

He would learn... from the age  of seven he would learn how to 

ride and how to fight with weapons

He was trained to be a soldier, essentially

And from there, his whole life until he was 

15 or 16, would be dedicated  to his own personal training

The process in which people learn  to train with arms takes time

You have to use and understand  and learn what a sword does

You have to learn and understand what  a lance does and how it should be used

This is our arming sword

It's a simple sword: two edges, a cross guard and a wheel pommel, and the grip

Now the sword can be used with  both edges at the same time

We call this the leading edge or long edge

This, the false edge

You can cut down, parry around, and then use the false edge backwards

So, for example, if I cut forwards and miss I can still cut back again with the other side

What's most common in the 15th century that we're based in for the jousting  

is the hand and a half sword

The blade is tapered and slightly diamond-shaped

It's not particularly sharp until  the very end where it tapers away

This is because we can use a technique called half-swording, where the sword can be gripped

and used to set aside a blade and  thrust into an opponent's body

This is particularly useful when fighting against another armoured opponent, where you

can search for the gaps within  the armour and strike through

Knights were trained to use lots of weapons

But the most common weapon used by  a knight on foot was the poleaxe

and in a tournament it was one of  the first things that you would see

Clive takes up a defensive  position with a lower guard

Lisa takes a high guard, and what she'll do is strike forward onto her right foot and

strike down upon her opponent's head, who parries it and then strikes towards her face

Clearly, the blow from Clive  would have won that point

However, if it is a different course of affairs, Lisa does the same thing

She strikes to the head

Clive powers it down but Lisa turns, knocks 

the cue out of the way and  strikes again to the head

One point to Lisa

Here is a lance

It's 12 foot of pine topped  with a training coronel

This is a cast polyurethane coronel instead 

of a traditional steel one that  would be used with a solid lance

But you can see how a lance like this would work

In the grip of an opponent... imagine that the wall is our opponent, we strike his shield

and then we can see the flex  of the lance start to break

and once our horse goes forward and that lance 

has gripped the shield, the  lance can only do one thing

which is to break

and once it breaks, that energy  explodes upwards into a shower of shards

It is truly an exhilarating display of force

[Increasingly faster drum beats]

The process of making armour  is a long and complicated one

Traditionally, armour is made by heating steel plates and forming them to shape the body

What we do in the modern generation is we are reproducing armour of the past, a whole

process that could take up to six months: shaping grinding, filing, fitting, and then

we can start the polishing, until we're finally happy with what we've got

The first piece of equipment that a rider 

puts on when he's getting ready to  joust are the lower leg defences

These are called the greaves

Next, we move on to the knees and the upper thighs

Here we have a corset of maille

This is all made from six  millimetre rings of maille

so it's more of a textile type  of armour than solid plate armour

This is a two-part cuirass

This is the armour that  protects most of the upper body

It's all made of hardened  and tempered spring steel

It's as near as it is to the  original type of steel used

– With the steel like this,  it's not a stainless steel

A fingerprint will leave an oily residue on 

it, and that will start  rusting effective immediately

so it takes maintenance,  and it's absolutely critical

So around the bottom of the  cuirass, I'm attaching extra plates

This one at the back hangs  down and protects the buttocks

These plates are called tassets and they give extra protection to the groin

So the next pieces are the arm defences

These are generally called vambraces

You may notice that the elbow piece on the 

left-hand side is significantly  bigger than the one on the right

When you're fighting on horseback with a lance, you’re using the lance over the neck of

the horse to the left, so the more that your 

left-hand side is defended,  the better it will be for you

This is a pauldron

These are the shoulder defences

Again, just like the arms, we find that this pauldron is bigger than its right-hand side

so, again, we are asymmetrical

So the final two pieces to  put on are the gauntlets 

and - most importantly - the helm

Training people on horses is  a long and complicated process

but it's helped enormously by some of the medieval fighting manuals at the time

particularly one written by  the King of Portugal in the 

early 15th century, Dom Duarte, wrote a  book called 'How to Ride on Every Saddle'

and in this, he describes in absolute implicit context how a man should joust

how to look at your opponent, how to carry 

your lance, how to do it safely on  your behalf and on your horse's behalf

So this is why we use the teachings of five hundred years ago, because they’re still  

relevant today

There's something really profound about what happens to your senses when you’re  

encased in armour

and a visor shut and you can see very little, and that focuses your mind

You can't just dive into it, you can't try  

jousting. You have to joust

and that's a very long journey from when you say 

‘I’d quite like to do that’  to actually achieving it

Riding horses just isn't enough for jousting

You have to be able to wear armour

so you have to be physically strong

You have to learn how to carry a lance for 

long periods of time and to cope  with the energy of a breaking lance

You've got to have a lot of aerobic support

You have to deal with a lot of mental stress

You have to deal with physical discomfort

You have to deal with cold, with heat

Sometimes all of those things at the same time

– "Laissez... Allez!"

What English Heritage offers is a chance to step back in time to something that is as close to

jousting as is actually possible to do

Because it is jousting

There's no pretend

People are breaking lances upon each other, 

how it happened with the equipment  that was used at the time

So what you're achieving is a very authentic 

joust, and that's not something  that anybody else can offer

There's many facets to my  job and I love most of it

I love being able to train and watch their journey to being very proficient riders

and then performing in front  of the public at a high level

And again, the same with the animals themselves

The horses are very, very  important to what we do. Vital

And watching their progression in training from young horses that are completely untrained

never had a horseman on their back, to the 

high levels of performance  that they can do is wonderful

There's nothing better than seeing  a horse when it has its first joust

That never leaves you

It's more than just a job,  more than just an income

It's something that has become a way of life

It's something that's imbued within me

Doing what we do for English Heritage is just a wonderful way of… really, not growing up!