THE BEGINNING:

In late 1995, just before John deployed for Operation Joint Endeavor, he found a gentleman selling esoteric “stuff” at the Mannheim PX in Mannheim, Germany. This man was in the SCA and happened to be reading the same book I was reading at the time (Druids – I never did finish that book).  We chatted with Ian MacWatt (aka Lord Perec of Castle Dore) for quite a while and I returned to chat with him after John had deployed.  In January of 1996, he invited us to go to a “fighter practice” which was a gathering of the people of the Barony of Knight’s Crossing.  They did Arts and Sciences, socialized and there was fighter practice for both Chivalric and Rapier fighters.  It was love at first contact.  We returned the next week, dragging friends along and that I when I first met Eleonora Vittoria Alberti de Calabria.  She was the Baroness of Knight’s Crossing and took us under her wing.

Eleonora quickly took me as her protégé and charged me with the responsibility of choosing a name and arms.  I discussed this process with Lord Perec and he told me about the lovely little castle of Restormel in the countryside of Cornwall.  Castle Dore is the site of an ancient castle and where his persona was from and he wanted us to be neighbors.  Restormel sounded as good and I did some research to find out a little about the Castle.  It is part of the Duchy of Cornwall and was one of the four notable Norman castles in Cornwall.  It was visited twice by the then owner, the Black Prince.  It sounded good to me, so that was the foundation upon which the rest was built.

Long before the official approval of the name of our household, we started gathering people into our SCA family.  We choose people because we really like them, because they need a place to be, because we want to give a sense of belonging, sometimes to protect them from vultures, and just because we felt like it.  Regardless of the reason, we choose people who share the same philosophy that we do.  Our household has a cornerstone of hospitality and service.  We invited Mark, Jason, Scott and Chris into our household.