Feature: Kryal Castle

FEATURE

If you don’t know a chanfron from a caparison, read on. AMANDA MAC speaks to Kryal Castle’s Phillip Leitch about his love for all things medieval.

When you first glimpse the impressive turrets of Kryal Castle, you may well think you’re having a Game of Thrones flashback. You’re not! Mind you, take a stroll around the castle grounds, and that first impression might linger, particularly if you happen to hear the pounding of hooves and a lance snapping as it connects with a knight’s shield.

Kryal Castle is the legacy left behind by Keith Ryall, who, driven by a vision and a passion for the Middle Ages, began building the castle in 1972. So it’s really quite fitting that the castle’s site manager is the equally passionate Phillip Leitch. Phillip, a world champion jouster, lives on site with wife Lisa and their 19-year-old daughter Mieka, with

the whole family contributing to a very special brand of Kryal magic.

While there are plenty of medieval-style attractions within the castle walls, the most fascinating by far is jousting, to which there is very much more than first meets the eye. For starters, we’re talking a small but global community of enthusiasts, who at the top of their sport travel to competitions all over the world.

In Australia, besides the tournaments held at Kryal Castle, there’s the annual St Ives Medieval Faire, which is probably the highest level of competition in this country. Jousters at the faire use solid lances with sharp steel tips, so their armour needs to be of high quality to ensure safety. This type of armour – which Phillip tells me is more correctly called a harness – is usually custom made and can easily cost upwards of $20,000. “Mine was made by a professional armourer based in Queensland,” he says. “He’s very well-known and has been working pretty much full time for over 20 years now.” Not a bad indication of the sport’s popularity.

But what about the weight of all that metal? Phillip’s harness weighs in at 36 kilograms, which certainly sounds a lot, but once the jouster is wearing it he says it’s a different story: “You can still move quite well because the weight is distributed and supported by your entire body. So you can run, fight and ride a horse quite comfortably.”

Equally important is the comfort of the horse, which is why harness weight is kept to under 25 per cent of a horse’s body weight, which, Phillip says, is quite acceptable. “We also train them to carry that type of weight. Riding them in frame, doing lots of short trot work and piaffes, and really strengthening their back muscles so not only can they carry us, they can carry us easily.” heads are protected with a plate armour chanfron, and the colourful ornamental rug-like covering worn over their body is known as a caparison. The saddles used at Kryal Castle are reconstructions of 15th century war saddles and are made from timber. Well-padded and worn with saddle cloths, each saddle is designed to spread weight out over the horse’s back, and is usually custom made to fit one particular horse.

When it comes to bits, Kryal Castle horses wear whatever is best suited to

each individual – a modern mouthpiece that has been decorated to look like the

genuine medieval article. The castle’s horses are all Percheron – one full-blood and two Percheron crosses – and most of the knights who ride and train at the castle with their own horses favour the baroque breeds. Phillip’s horse Valiant is a magnificent Friesian stallion. “He’s the main horse that works here because I’m the main jouster, and he’s the horse that people want to see. One of the other knights here has one of Valiant's progeny, a Friesian Andalusian cross,” he adds.

Clearly the Leitch family are devoted to their horses. It was Lisa who imported Lucio Do Rei, a stunning Cremello Lusitano, the only pure bred stallion of his kind in Australia. “He brings

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something very unique to the Australian gene pool with his double dilute,” Phillip says, “so we’re able to breed him with a chestnut mare and get a guaranteed palomino, as well as lots of other nice colourings. And his temperament and conformation are of an extremely high standard.” (Read more about coat colour on p.48 and in our May/June issue).

No surprise then that Lucio has become a bit of a feature at Kryal Castle’s annual Baroque Horse Festival. Organised by Lisa, the festival is usually held in October and showcases baroque breeds

and their history. “On the day, we’ll do a special kind of joust using baroque horses, as well as a pas de deux, working equitation, and other displays, all with riders in period costumes,” Phillip explains.

Joust training for both horses and riders is taken very seriously. It can take several years of hard work before you’re considered ready for a tournament. “Australia is ranked pretty highly where jousting is concerned, and Kryal Castle contributes quite significantly to that. We train jousters to a high level and support them in the big tournaments,” Phillip says. “The jousters we send out have practised every week and are well and truly prepared. We’re known around the world for having some of the best, if not the best jousters.”

Jousting requires a significant degree of physical fitness and strength, and most jousters will do some sort of training other than their riding. Phillip, for example, usually starts a fitness regime two or three months out from a big tournament to ensure he’s in peak condition.

And if you were thinking jousting might be gender biased, think again! There’s no competition that’s especially for women – they compete against the men – and there have always been females on the Kryal Castle jousting team. In fact, Phillip’s daughter Mieka recently cut her jousting teeth in a public competition at the castle, something of which the whole family is very proud.

Training a jousting horse also takes time. Making sure they’re desensitised to various stimulus and getting the basic dressage moves down is essential to allow for manoeuvrability during a joust. “I’ll want to go into a bit of a collected canter at the beginning of my run and then extend it towards the middle, before pulling up to a nice halt at the end,” Phillip says. “Dressage is very important. If you’ve got a horse whose

flatwork is good it can be quite easy to train them to joust.” Perhaps the biggest ask for the horse, a herd animal who usually runs with other horses to escape danger, is to run against another horse into what they might perceive as danger. “They need to be exposed to that step by gentle step so they realise that it’s OK. Ideally, you want the horse to think it’s all pretty boring!” Phillip laughs.

When it comes to injuries, they’re almost non-existent. Kryal Castle has policies and procedures in place around how everything is done, as well as the appropriate safety equipment, plus an emphasis on high level training before anyone can joust there. “People will

often have to train for years before I feel they’re ready to go out and joust,” Phillip says. “With all those strategies in place, injuries to horses are basically nil and riders may go home a bit muscle sore with a couple of bumps and bruises, but nothing terrible.”

Other than the colour, the spectacle and the excitement of jousting, Phillip is very clear around the kind of experience he would like visitors to Kryal Castle to have. “A really nice lady came up to me after we’d finished a performance and all she said was thank you for preserving history. And that really nailed it for me because there’re places where they joust as a bit of a fun novelty show, but that’s not what we’re doing here.” Jousters at Kryal Castle wear the correct armour, ride the right type of horses and are jousting to a very high standard. Their aim is to show people what horsemanship and jousting actually looked like in the Middle Ages. “I think visitors expect to see knights come out who can’t see, hear, or move very well in their armour, riding big plodding horses that can only go in a straight line and then stop,” says Phillip.

When the Kryal Castle jousters canter pirouettes and demonstrate other

movements that require a significant degree of equestrian expertise, there’s little doubt that misconceptions are shattered. “If people get an insight into history, at the way knights and horses worked together as a unit, and the high level of horsemanship they had, which is what we replicate, then I would be more than happy with that outcome,” Phillip says.

Want to know more? Visit kryalcastle. com.au for information on their attractions and opening hours.