Thetford Hill turns Medieval for a day - a photo essay

Medieval-themed revelers braved Saturday's threatening skies and occasional drizzle to turn out for the Open Fields School Medieval Festival on the Thetford Hill Green. This colorful, fun-filled and family-oriented event has a history, as briefly sketched out by School Director Nellie Pennington. 

The school itself is a private, non-graded educational organization for children aged 4-12, founded in 1971 by Jean Aull with the central philosophy that children naturally explore, discover, and learn. The curriculum treats every child as an individual, encouraged to develop in a self-directed manner and at their own pace in a non-competitive environment. 

To augment the funds raised from its tuition fees Open Fields holds a variety of fundraising events. As Nellie summarized, one of them is the Medieval Festival. This started back in the late 1990s, possibly in 1998, as an event that ran every other year. It alternated with the Goose Egg Auction, a highly-anticipated sale of goose eggs decorated in ornate or whimsical styles by area artists, authors and illustrators. They were prized by collectors. But the Goose Egg auction became a casualty of the pandemic, the next one had been planned for October of 2021. Instead the school was forced by COVID to close for the first half of 2020, reopening in the fall with full masking. Nellie noted with some pride that not a single person contracted COVID at the school for the duration of the pandemic that officially ended in 2023.

With the resumption of life in the post-pandemic era, the Medieval Festival has been resurrected, a little shakily at first, with the goal of becoming a yearly event. Holding it every other year was not optimal as it confused potential festival-goers and people tended to just forget about it. Putting on such a complicated event works better if there is continuity, which probably helps in keeping volunteers engaged too. Open Fields is lucky in that respect as some parents have returned loyally for many years to help. 

Nellie also expressed gratitude to the Hypertherm Community Service Volunteers, who are paid to provide 40 hours per year of volunteer help to some aspect of the local community. In this case Hypertherm volunteers set up all the tents on the day prior to the festival , something that Open Fields just didn't have the manpower for. 

The aim of the festival is to bring "the sights and sounds of a Medieval Village" to the Thetford Hill Green, as portrayed in the following photographs.