- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
TORM – Why you need to visit The original Reenactors Market
by Blue Firth (founder of Dohm Shop), April 2026
In a world of beige be Blue. That's how I feel when I read whatever Blue Firth sends me. I say whatever, although she does tell me, I never know quite what to expect. What I am always sure of is that I will be delighted. This feature is no different, Blue introduces us to the world that stands in the present with it head thoroughly buried in the past. If there could be a more Tat article I am not sure we could find it, although her piece on Finding Bohemia, is still one of my favourite reads and I insist you make a note to read it soon after this.
Anyway for you dearest of Tat members a 'thank you', with your patronage I can in turn ask wonderful people like Blue to contribute to this hodge podge of a journal.
Twice yearly a gathering occurs. It inhabits two sports halls on the outskirts of Coventry, or Leamington, depending on which direction you approach from. I have been each year in spring for three years now, and an ear-worm from my childhood wiggles its way into my brain as I pull into a meadow car park. Cue the Toys R’ Us jingle. I don’t quite know why, as this adventure has nothing to do with toys. But it has everything to do with the purity of discovery, magic, fantasy and history.
I’ve put off sharing this gathering as I was mean and greedy and wanted to have it all to myself. I felt it a secret somehow, one I wasn’t ready to share. But Tat readers: we can keep it to ourselves, can’t we?
Each year I would come back laden with gifts and presents and treasure. Friends would exclaim at the ornaments on my mantle, or the witch bottle that held the first spring tulips. One year I bought Venetian glass with prunts and a bullrush woven sun hat, the next a very Darcey-esque linen blouse and a replica of The Nottingham Knight. I have coveted early eye-glasses and Tudor cloth, Georgian ribbon and a crumhorn. Oh and why did I not come away with a pair of Napoleonic shoes? This last time a 1930s munitions worker’s dress was still there from the previous year. It didn’t fit me when I tried it on and I was agog that such a find could still be available. I lament that I didn’t buy a quiver or the piece of cloth that was laid on the Mary Rose.
Get out of here I hear you say. No such place exists. It’s almost like you’re saying that Georgian archers, French Revolutionary factory workers, and Viking jewellers all gather in one place twice a year. What anachronistic nonsense is this?
But it does exists. And it’s called TORM. The Original Reenactors Market!
Twice a year reenactors, LARPERS, vintage dealers, set designers and historians all descend to buy their wares and share their knowledge.
