National Play Day – Warrington Viking Medieval Market 2011

Look at the gallery for this event! Gallery

We had a small start back in 2011. Steve Pickering, the former Warrington Market manager posed the following question all those years ago – ‘Remember that Viking Medieval event you did back in 1999 for the millennium? Well, how do you fancy bringing something similar back for National Play Day, just to see how popular it would be?’

It started small. We had only two tents, a small arena and more hay bales than people!

We started some traditions, with the Lord of Macclesfield’s Retinue joining the Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Fighting Knights) of Failsworth and Warrington Vikings to bring a weapons display and just one authentic trader. We joined the small town centre event aimed entirely at children.

Other features of the event included a Dalek, balloons, food, street entertainment, face painting and more, all centred around the skittles in the town centre.

We had a strong little team made up of Vikings Ruth, Bunny, Snorri and Camie, Pauline and Steve from South Wales, Mark the Tudor (who didn’t sit down for more than 11 hours), traders House of Freya and knights Adam and Mark from Southern France.

This appearance may not have been the first ‘proper’ Viking Medieval Market, but our humble beginnings clearly established a broad pattern of events to come. The attendance also confirmed that we were onto a winner, with over 3,500 people visiting between when we arrived at 8am and when we finally left at 7pm!

It was a success, and the roots of the Viking Medieval Markets took hold.