About

Experience life in the Wild West, with the reenactors on hand demonstrating their daily life and telling you how they worked and live.

A 1870’s Wild West tent-town will transform the historic Royal Gunpowder Mills  on the late May Bank Holiday weekend 27 – 29 May.  On Saturday through to Monday the settler folk of the tent town greet visitors and tell of their hopes of a new life in the American West, but on Sunday and Monday a shoot-out occurs between the new settlers and cowboys!

This is living history staged by Laredo, a Wild West troupe.  This year’s show theme tells the story of the Wild West changing from open land where cattle roamed and grazed freely watched over by cowboys, to parcels of land marked out by new settlers with newly-invented barbed wire.  Cowboys and cattle barons trying to preserve their way of life, and settlers trying to protect their homes, led to many range wars.  

Liz Went of the Royal Gunpowder Mills said: ‘this is one of our most popular shows for adults as well as children, educational and exciting. Demonstrating how gunpowder was a constructive and destructive force.  It helped build America, blasting ground for new railroads and creating towns and cities, but equally fuelling territorial skirmishes and wars.”  Expect some loud bangs at the show!

Feel free to come dressed as a cowboy or cowgirl, Mexican or Native American Indian.  For families there will be a range of themed activities for children, plus there are the Mad Lab science shows demonstrating the science of explosions and propellants in a fun way. 

Open 10am – 5pm, Last Entry 3pm, standard entry prices apply.

Entry to the event includes all the usual attractions and activities available at the Royal Gunpowder Mills including guided tours of the whole site, the rocket display and armoury, which the re-enactors bring into context.

This is a not-to-be missed event.