Is Archery Making a Comeback?

It was more than a couple of hundred years ago when archery was truly popular in Britain. The fact is that it was always a weapon of war and much of its decline can be put down to the evolution of guns as a more accurate and easy to use alternative. However, archery was always regarded as a great skill and recently has begun to see resurgence in Britain as a popular pastime and valuable skill.



For years archery was a widely practiced skill across Britain as they were crucial to any military encounter and for a long time after they became obsolete archery training was still widespread. In fact in some parts of England it was actually mandatory for men over a certain age to practice use of the longbow regularly. However, in time this was phased out and archery spent many years as a niche sport. That is until recently as archery has seen a massive rise in popularity in the last decade, but why?



Well, much of this can be put down to romanticism for the sport most commonly found in popular movies. If you think about famous archers Robin Hood usually is the first to spring to mind, probably followed at a distance by William tell. However if you consider the number of TV shows based around medieval Britain and even the Romans you can see that archery is very common in entertainment.



Of course you can't simply put it down to this and much of the popularity can be based on old fashioned tradition. Britain has always been big on tradition and archery is certainly on that list. The longbow is so popular in England because of its success in the war against the French that they renamed it the English Longbow. Originally this was actually known as the Welsh longbow.



Furthermore a new kind of archery is beginning to take off in the style of Genghis Khan who favoured using an archery bow on horseback. This has really begun to take off in Britain although shooting men has obviously been replaced with shooting targets.



With this rise in the popularity of archery it makes you wonder if other feudal weapons will return like the mace or flail. Probably not that likely.