We’ve not been updating here much, but the club has had a very busy 2025 so far!
We’ve been training lots during the year, and have unfortunately neglected getting some updates on the website. So, without further ado, we’re giving a quick rundown of what we’ve been doing so far!
February and March saw us joining with a HEMA Ireland initiative to recognise International Women’s Day by running some taster workshops in longsword and messer, and next year we’re hoping to get back to running our Morrigan’s Melee women’s event for IWD. We also gave a short on-stage HEMA demo for an Action Cancer fundraiser event organised by Mudra Academy of Performing Arts UK.
April saw a group of us heading over to The Art That Adorns You 2025, a weekend long event in York. One of our instructors, Ross, taught a workshop on the safe build-up to light-protection steel sparring, and he also picked up the technical trophy for the mixed weapon steel tournament, whilst one of our other instructors, Kelly, picked up the Spirit of the Event award.
In May we ran our annual weekend-long Bladeworks event, with guest instructors from across the UK and Ireland teaching a variety of classes across a range of weapons, culminating in our fechtschule style tournaments for steel longsword, mixed steel single handed weapons, and beginners longsword.
June saw one of our students, Chris Warke, head down to the Dublin leg of the Irish Historical Fencing League, picking up the silver medal in the Tier B tournament, an excellent performance in his first steel elimination tournament!
In July, a group from MCG attended Messer Fest in York, the only event in the UK (and one of very very few around the world) dedicated to the messer. As messer is one of our two main weapons in the club, we were delighted to get across this year, with our messer instructor Ross teaching a workshop at the event.
Not much later, in early August one of our other instructors, Kelly, was over at Fightcamp, co-teaching a messer workshop with Lauren Ireland of York School of Defence. August also saw us assessing two of our existing students, Chris and Josh Stewart, for the Free Scholar rank, consisting of a lengthy technical assessment, followed by them sparring 50+ opponents in turn without rest or break whilst demonstrating a breadth of techniques from our syllabus against a range of opponents.
And finally in August, bringing us up to date, the group was out at Dunluce Castle, giving HEMA demonstrations to the public, and generally just enjoying being around such a beautiful castle on the north coast!
The end of the year is looking to be just as busy, but hopefully we’ll get more updates along the way!