SYLVAN ARCHERY Traditional archery specialist |
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Bows, arrows and associated kit for the archer, museums and quality re-enactment |
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SYLVAN ARCHERY |
TRADITIONAL ARCHERY SPECIALIST |
Hilary Greenland -short biography Started archery at the age of 5 -shooting a willow bow and arrows while making a western filmed by a neighbour. Unfortunately she looked like the Milky Bar Kid (some of you may remember...) so she was mainly on the cowboy side; the bow was confiscated as the cat was beginning to show signs of stress. 1985: learnt to shoot in a church crypt in Bristol, but consistently pulled her arrows from the wrong target -at 15 yards! Found talk of clickers, buttons, sights and stabilisers confusing. Determined to see if there was another, more simple, way of shooting a bow. Took up the English longbow and field archery, and immediately felt happier, not only when shooting, but also when dragging targets around woods and helping build courses. 1987: Too impatient to go on a waiting list for a suitable longbow (not many bowmakers in those days) made her first longbow. (Named ‘budgie’ due to the falcon shaped top nock.) Finding what worked through trial and error, and with the few references available at the time, bowmaking became an obsession. Not easy in a one bedroomed flat, but who needs a living room anyway and wood shavings are as good as a carpet. Came third in her first National Field Archery Society Championships. Became a reasonable shot although many ‘attendance’ medals rattle about among her collection, as she was often the only ladies longbow in the competition. Eventually won the AFB class with a GRP clad flatbow of her own making. (Nicknamed ‘the Vixen’). Archers started asking her to make them bows. Roving Marks and flight is her favourite type of shooting but she no longer regularly attends competitions. While shooting 'self’ bows such as native american flatbows and Holmegaards in competition, she realised that so-called 'primitive' bows were under-rated if not actually dismissed by many archers, and so founded the Society for the Promotion of Traditional Archery to promote these and the various forms of traditional bow shooting not commonly encouraged by other UK archery Societies. SPTA introduced the Primitive class to the UK (with a very simple specification) and encourages horseback archery; unfortunately a potentially serious and painful accident (horse+handstand=Hilary+somersault) drove home the fact that she was never going to ride well enough to participate, so she has restricted herself to encouraging it through SPTA. The best thing about archery -particularly the traditional sort -is that you never stop learning. It has everything -history, sociology, culture and craft. That suits her just fine! |
BOWMAKING WORKSHOP |
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