HISTORIC re-enactment group The Sealed Knot turned Monmouthshire Showground into a battlefield last weekend as they recreated the battle for Monmouth.

Roundhead leader and later Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, who ruled England for 11 years, stayed in the town exactly 375 years ago this month (May 10/11, 1648), on his way to the siege of Chepstow Castle in the second Civil War, so it was a timely visit by the living history group.

The 55-year-old Sealed Knot even have a local connection with Monmouth as Peter Young, their founder, was a former pupil at Monmouth School for Boys.

It turned in to an exciting recreation of one of the many sieges and skirmishes in the area between 1643 and 1645, as members of the public were invited to see a Living History Village and a variety of displays including close up on a cannon, domestic life in the period, cavalry, scribe and pen making, life of a soldier as well as a trader, well-off pikemen and musketeers.

Events in the town itself included a court room re-enactment and a fashion show, all in the Shire Hall, and a guard at Monnow Bridge as the Roundheads tried to keep the Royalists out.