When: From 1.30pm, 1 March 2020
Where: Bridge Place, Godmanchester to High Street, Huntingdon
To celebrate the grand reopening of the Cromwell Museum, Colonel John Pickering’s Regiment of Foote of the Sealed Knot society will stage a unique event that will bring this historic town’s past to life.
Members of the Sealed Knot dressed in 17th Century clothing will march from the neighbouring town of Godmanchester, over the main 14th Century Old Bridge, down Huntingdon High Street, and finish in the market square in front of the museum.
The parade will begin at Bridge Place (PE29 2AB) at 1.30pm and arrive in Huntingdon in time for the Opening Ceremony, attended by dignitaries, at 2pm. After the ceremony, the museum will then be open for the public and there will be further cameos in the afternoon.
The Earl of Manchester’s Regiment of Foote is proud to support our friends in Pickering’s at this event in a town with huge links to our regiment’s history – the Earl of Manchester, whose regiment we reenact, was a former MP for and Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire; his Eastern Association army drew heavily on the area for men and supplies, and he was also Cromwell’s commander during the first part of the first English Civil War. The pair famously fell out in 1644 and their quarrel was partly responsible for the creation of the New Model Army.
Closed since October 2019, the Cromwell Museum is dedicated to explaining and understanding this pivotal and controversial figure in British history, and work on the new state-of-the-art facility is nearing completion in the former Huntingdon Grammar School building, which was where Oliver Cromwell was educated as a schoolboy.
For more information about the museum and its £160,000 refurbishment, you can visit their website.