23/08/2026
As the anniversary of the battle of Crécy takes place over this weekend, I thought it would be interesting to repost these photos, of the arrows and bow that I was commissioned to make for the Crécy Museum six years ago. The arrows were all made using the research I was conducting at the time, and the bow is an English yew bow that I made, of around 140lb, with cow horn sidenocks and a 1.7mm h**p string, which I twisted from h**p fibre I cut and processed myself, laid into fish glue - no reverse twist made from short fibre twine, but a string made in the true Flemish style.
But how research marches on! Not a single one of these arrows or their construction is accurate any more, and it's fascinating to see where my studies and quest for knowledge have taken me in six years.
I have since studied and handled genuine medieval arrows from the Crécy period, and these arrows are more suitable for a period 100 years later. The heads aren't correct for the mid-14thC, and neither are the shaft diameters.
You can see these on display at the Crécy museum, and soon I will be replacing them with accurate reproductions of the surviving Crécy period English military arrows and heads that I have been able to access, handle, measure and copy.
The bow and string are ok though, they can stay ;)
