EVE Finlay has fought in the Battle of Hastings and the Wars of the Roses.

She has friends who were involved in Agincourt and the Crusades.

If this all sounds like a bad case of regression therapy into past lives, it must be said that Eve lives very much in the here and now.

Her enthusiasm for long bows and broad swords is fired by her position as commander of the L'Estrange Companye, a retinue of men-at-arms with the British Plate Armour Society, which specialises in battles and skirmishes from 1066 (Hastings) to 1485 (Bosworth Field).

"But", says Eve (59), "we don't often do the earlier ones because people prefer to see you clanking around in armour."

At her home in West Harnham, she lays out her full suit of armour, some of which like the padded jacket and the chain mail, she has made herself.

Fully kitted out from cap a pie, as they used to say in days of yore, she will wear a helmet and bevor (to protect the neck), a solid plate-covered body protector called a brigandine, padded jacket, arm protectors with fingered gauntlets, a chain mail drop around her wrist, upper leg armour and knee protectors and greaves - all of which weighs in at a staggering three and a half stone.

Sabatons - long pointy metal foot protectors - are optional.

"But I don't fancy them," says Eve.

"You have to flip your feet up as you walk."

Originally from London, Eve moved here 12 years ago.

When she was in London, she made enquiries after seeing shows at castles around the capital.

"But when I asked what I could be, I was told I could be a lady of the court, a water carrier or a camp follower."

Unexcited by the prospect, Eve let the matter drop until she moved to Salisbury and went to watch a show at Old Sarum castle and met with the members of the British Plate Armour Society.

"They said I could be anything I wanted to be," she says.

"There is no sexual discrimination.

"Once I've got my armour on, I take the field as a man and I'm known as Baron Jehan L'Estrange of Blackmere.

"In the evening I put on a dress and I'm the Lady Ankaret and, if any day I don't feel like fighting, I can just be a water carrier."

Rather like the people who bring on the orange quarters at half time in a hockey match, water carriers are vital.

"They come on after every fight, bringing water to stop you getting too hot," she explains.

"Fighting in armour in the summer is like being in your own sauna."

She joined up as an archer, enlisting children Alex and Fiona at the same time.

"But once you run out of arrows, you get killed off pretty quickly, but with armour and a sword, you stand a chance of staying alive longer.

"So I squired for a bit and you gradually build up your confidence and your armour.

"Once you've got enough armour and are proficient at arms, you get knighted."

It's not a hobby for the unfit or faint-hearted.

"We don't do head shots, we don't thrust at one another and we can't do it the way they tell you to in the books because we're not trying to kill each other," she says.

Which is just as well because there is every opportunity to damage your companions when more than 2000 of you take to the battlefield for a re-enactment scene.

But, she assures me, there is order in the chaos.

"We have a vague plan of what we're going to do and marshals go round and make sure the battle follows the right pattern.

"It looks rough, as though we're aiming to hurt each other," she says.

"But the worst thing we get is bruises."