When you hear the words "Martial Arts", you can be forgiven for immediately thinking about the Oriental martial arts such as Aikido, Judo or Karate. These martial arts are fine examples of the genre, and incredibly effective tools for self defence. "Martial Arts" is really about the study of war and combat, however, and need not necessarily mean Japanese, Korean or Chinese disciplines.

Not many people realise that we have a long documented history of martial arts in Western Europe. These manifest themselves today in boxing, wrestling and fencing... but the tradition is a broken one, and does not have the "market presence" of Kung Fu or Kickboxing, despite most of the European arts having an older origin. For over 600 years, Western combat schools and fencing masters have documented ways to fight an opponent, be he unarmed, or with a weapon... in armour or in their civillian clothing.

One of the areas the PFG are keen to communicate to the public is the resurgence of interest in our own martial heritage. We regularly meet to study the translations of these manuals, written originally in High German, Latin or Middle English, and we train together to guage the effectiveness of the techniques. This not only enables us to provide accurate combat displays, but also gives us a good grounding in an effective and useable defensive art.

Some of our members attend only for this aspect of our training and take no part in our historical demonstrations or displays, and there is a growing interest in using the European martial arts as an effective method of self defence.