HISTORICAL ERA

VIKING AGE IRELAND & THE ANGLO-NORMANS c.795-1250

From the first Viking raid to the fall of Hiberno-Norse Dublin in 1171 and the subsequent Anglo-Norman era of great castle and religious house building

AGE OF THE GALLOGLASS c.1250-1600

Late Medieval Ireland: The Pale, the Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Resurgence and the impact of these heavily armed professional Gaelic mercenary soldiers

SIXTEENTH CENTURY CAMPAIGNS 1487-1609

From Stoke Field through the Desmond Rebellions in Munster and the Nine Years War to the Plantation of Ulster

IRISH CONFEDERATE & CROMWELLIAN WARS 1641-1652

The rising of 1641 and its equally brutal suppression and the great war that engulfed these islands in the 'War of the Three Kingdoms'

The group specialises in interpretations of warriors and soldiery c.1480-1660 A.D. of Irish Gaelic lineage (in which we include the galloglasses or gallóglaigh who were originally of Norse-Highland descent although who were by sixteenth-century times largely populated by native Irishmen), seasonal 'redshank' mercenaries from the Scots Highlands/Western Isles, those of Anglo-Irish - or 'Old English' - extraction, and Anglo-Scots Borderers. The period of speciality covered by Claíomh stretches from the last quarter of the fifteenth century with the final death throe of the Wars of the Roses at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487 - which, interestingly, involved the invasion of England by a combined Hiberno-German force - carrying through to the epoch of the tumultuous sixteenth century under the shadow of the powerful Tudor dynasty, and onwards into the seventeenth century to the end of the Irish Confederate & Cromwellian Wars fought in the 1640’s. Particular focus centres round the military personnel who participated in four main areas of interest: