A diverse community of combatants helps keep an over 600-year-old sport alive
By Jon Decker-Granite State News Collaborative
On the top floor of the Lake Street Mill building in Nashua, tucked among various studios and workshops, is The Knights Hall, “an armored combat training and fitness center” where students learn to master the ways of war from over half a millennium ago as a means of getting and staying physically and mentally fit.
Amid the battle ropes, kettlebells and weights, one can find battleaxes, polearms and steel swords tucked in corners and shelves. Knight-themed trophies and medals decorate the walls, while European and Pride flags dangle from the ceiling
During a recent session, students practiced swings on dummies as Knights Hall founder Jaye Brooks wove his way through the flailing foam blades like a cat through high grass, pausing to provide instruction. The 59-year-old Brooks has practiced medieval combat since 1981. He opened The Knights Hall to the public in 2014, and ever since has been shaping fantasy and history lovers into armored athletes who compete against their counterparts across the globe.
“Just about everyone here is into science fiction, fantasy, comics,” said Brooks, a lifelong Tolkein reader, said of his students. “It’s kind of a Venn diagram of nerd pancakes, and the overlaps are continual.”
At competitions, the foam and plastic is replaced with steel, transforming padded 21st century history buffs into 15th century armored warriors. Period-accurate metal axes, blades and maces crack against armored suits that weigh up to 95 pounds. Matches range from one-on-one duels to massive 16-vs.-16 melees, where fighters can trip, throw, grapple, kick and punch their opponents with metal gauntlets. (Gauntlets are the gloves worn by medieval knights.)
“There’s a certain savagery to it – but also esoteric. There is nothing else like it.” said student Jack Conway, after watching a bout of armored duels at a recent demonstration held at New England College in Henniker.
Despite the intensity, numerous safety precautions are taken. Axe and sword blades are dulled, and stabbing and thrusting strikes are completely forbidden. The helmets worn by combatants are thicker and heavier than those used by their historical counterparts in battle, and they employ modern padding to reduce the chance of a concussion.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, Brooks explained, European knights and men at arms demonstrated their prowess in tournament-like sporting events. The goal was not to kill, but to best their opponent to gain renown as well as military and social status.
Today, Brooks and other practitioners rely on techniques straight out of medieval fencing manuals. Brooks’ expertise has also landed him a few consulting roles for fantasy books, film projects and video fighting games, including “For Honor.”
Armored combat fighting, he said, is “a thing of valor, it’s hard. It’s difficult, and there’s risk. “I tried to make myself as good as I could be as a fighter, so I trained in medieval combat maybe four days a week since the 1980s.”
Brooks eventually found his way to The Knights Hall because of his fragile health condition growing up.
“I was the asthmatic with bad eyes and a trach,” Brooks said, pointing to a scar on his throat from a tracheotomy.
Brooks’ condition kept him cooped up in the winters due to the effects of living among the family’s pets and with his father’s smoking habit.
“I got sick, so I’d be stuck in my room. So I read fantasy books,” Brooks said.
Brooks’s literary wanderings in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers struck a chord. He became an avid Dungeons & Dragons player during the popular role-playing game’s infancy in the 1970s. D&D led to participating in Renaissance fairs, ultimately sealing Brooks’ fate.
In 1981, Brooks attended the Florentine Fair in Lincoln, R.I., and saw his first armored fight, albeit with wooden weapons and metal armor. It was “the coolest thing ever,” for the teenaged Brooks, he said.
From there, he started training and competing through the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an organization that re-creates history through combat and cultural reenactments. For three decades, Brooks moved up the ranks, and eventually became the U.S. champion of the SCA’s combat league. In this version of the sport, competitors wear metal armor, but use wooden weapons.
At the time, Brooks said he had a day job in “corporate America,” and found himself somewhat bored, feeling constrained by the required use of weapons that didn’t meet medieval standards.
“I said, ‘What do I do now?” Brooks recalled. He found the answer online.
‘Where has this been my whole life’?
Just as medieval reenactments like the SCA grew in the West, so did historical societies throughout Eastern Europe, in countries like Ukraine and Russia. In the late ‘90s, Eastern European reenactors were already using steel weapons and armor. In 2010, the first official “Battle of the Nations” was held in Ukraine.
In 2011, Brooks saw a Battle of the Nations video on Facebook. He was enthralled with the use of full armor and steel weapons. After watching, Brooks said to himself, “Where has this been my whole life?”
By October, Brooks reached out to old reenactor friends and members of the SCA to build a team to fight at the third Battle of the Nations in Warsaw, Poland.
“I opened up The Knights Hall to kind of train me to do this,” Brooks said. “We were doing SCA stuff here and some steel stuff here. I invited people here to come and try out and play with it. Next thing you know, I got people coming here to train pretty regularly.”
Brooks cobbled together a team for the third Battle of the Nations in Warsaw. Team USA finished among the top four countries overall, and Brooks received a mention in the Congressional Record for his efforts.
“A couple years go by, and it's 2014, and we come home from Spain with two world championships, and Team USA wins seven out of nine events in 2014,” That’s when he decided to open The Knights Hall to the public.
As part of Brooks’ efforts to introduce more people to the sport, The Knights Hall hosts Renaissance fairs and other public events across New England. Spectators get to watch bouts, learn some history and hold the weapons and armor used in matches.
One of Brooks’ top fighters, Colton Kilcoyn, a former Nashua resident who now lives in Rhode Island, demonstrated their prowess at a Renaissance fair held in early April at New England College. Kilcoyne’s brigandine – a piece of chest armor – was purchased abroad while in Ukraine, which continues to be a hub for both the sport and the equipment.
However, due to the ongoing war there, it’s been harder and harder to obtain armor and weapons. Since the Russian invasion, members of Ukraine’s men’s team have traded their blunted battle axes and swords for automatic weapons and hand grenades, and smiths who once dedicated their talents to making replicas of historical armor are using their skills to make weapons of modern war.
‘All types’ welcome
For Kilcoyne, it is the combination of competitive intensity, athleticism and the tight-knit community that keeps them coming back. Many of the practitioners are neurodivergent, or like Kilcoyne, are members of the LGBTQ community. On the battlefield and in the training hall, they find acceptance and camaraderie.
“We’re very open to all types here,” Kilcoyne explained. “We have people who have never played a sport in their life before, and they’re just like, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ and we will go from start to finish with you.”
“You will see the flavors of autism, ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), nerd overlap with everyone here,” added Kilcoyne, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. “Where else are you going to get so much stimulus all ot once where you have to think strategically and keep moving?”
“If I were to write an autobiography, it would probably be titled, ‘Sword Fighting Saved My Life’,” said student Brian Chabot, a Nashua resident who has trained in the sport since 2012. “When I started, I couldn’t get up a flight of stairs without getting winded. My asthma was out of control, I was drinking heavily, smoking heavily, living a pretty sedentary lifestyle.”
Chabot is now learning horseback riding in the hopes of competing in modern jousting competitions, further fueling his love for history, which drew him into the sport initially.
Chabot joined The Knights Hall in 2012 to hone his rapier fencing skills, and by 2018 switched to armored combat. After over a decade of training, he now helps museums with weapons and armor curation on the side. He remains connected to The Knights Hall for the community, he said,
“The chivalry aspects come with it as a sport,” Chabot said. “There’s no bullying. No matter how bad or good you are. If you take to the ring, you have the respect of everybody.”
Kilcoyne started their medieval journey after 10 years of roller derby and 16 years of horseback riding. Unlike many other practitioners, Kilcoyne didn’t have childhood dreams of knighthood, instead, they digitally stumbled into the sport.
“I got this Facebook invite to an all-women’s combat practice,” Kilcoyne recalled. “I said, ‘Let me go support it and see what happens.’ I never left.”
Since then, Kilcoyne has competed internationally and nationally, collecting medals as they go. The sport, in Kilcoyne’s own words, has taken over half of their life.
“It’s my job, it’s my profession.It’s my life,” Kilcoyne, who started running a second Knight’s Hall location in Charlton, Mass., said.
The Knights Hall doesn’t just value diversity in athletic ability. On its website, is a statement describing the institution as an “unapologetic ally of women’s rights, the LGBTQ and BI-POC communities and freedom of religion.”
Kilcoyne wears a small shield on their hip bearing the colors of the pride flag, a decision that has turned heads in certain countries when competing internationally.
“You’re going to meet people from other countries, and you’re going to have to figure out how the sport works with their culture in a way,” Kilcoyne explained. “I’m not going to get into it, but in Spain I had some issues, partially because I had a rainbow flag on.”
“It just depends on what kind of battles you want to fight there,” Kilcoyne added. “But I’m going to continue fighting for everyone to be able to fight in the division that they believe they should be in.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.