A grand banquet thrown 400 years ago in honour of King James I is to be recreated in the Great Hall of Warwick's Lord Leycester next month, giving 100 lucky guests a chance to enjoy a unique evening fit for royalty. 

Tickets are on sale now for the special event on 21 September, which includes a four-course feast, traditional drinks, entertainment and free costume hire for the night. 

The Lord Leycester, which sits in the heart of Warwickshire's county town and is one of the most significant medieval sites in Europe, is recreating the banquet hosted by the Earl of Warwick for King James I when the King visited in 1617.

At the time the three-day feast was a huge honour for the town but with no expense spared, it left Warwick in debt for 10 years afterwards.  

The Lord Leycester is now giving people the chance to relive the famous banquet - but for one night only, rather than three days - when it stages the Lord Leycester King James I Banquet in the venue's half-timbered medieval hall. 

A four-course meal fit for a king will feature traditional dishes including vegetable and pearl barley pottage served in a bread bowl; suckling pig, roasted pork, chicken and venison; and fig tarte tatin or citrus posset, followed by English cheeses prepared by The Fourpenny Shop from Warwick. The traditional drinks of the day ale, mead, claret will be included in the ticket price. 

To add to the ambience of the night authentic Elizabethan and Jacobean entertainment will be provided by 'Mellow Sounds Recorder Trio' and 'Diabolus in Musica'. 

In the spirit of completing the realism, the Lord Leycester is offering free hire for the night from its range of 350 historical costumes that have been recently donated.

People will be able to choose their outfit a week before the event, pay a deposit, then arrive in historical dress on the night of the banquet before returning the costume the following week and claiming their deposit back.  

Heidi Meyer, Master of the Lord Leycester, said: "The visit by King James I to Warwick and the Lord Leycester in 1617 was a grand event in our collective history – guests to the modern day version of that banquet  can dine under the Seal of James I recently revealed in our Great Hall." 

"To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King's visit, we first recreated the banquet in 2017 and it was a huge hit. We wanted to relaunch the banquet this year with a view to having it as a regular event on the Warwick annual calendar." 

"The banquet will start in the Courtyard as our King arrives and then guests will proceed into the Great Hall where they will dine on long banquet style tables with the King and his courtiers.  We have researched the period and copied the style of eating and drinking as best we can given modern day eating standards!" 

Tickets for the Lord Leycester King James I Banquet are on sale now, priced £85 per person, and are available to buy on the Lord Leycester website or in person from the Lord Leycester Ticket office during opening hours. The ticket price includes all food and drink for the evening, along with free costume hire. 

The Lord Leycester is one of the most significant medieval sites in the UK - and Europe. The collection of half-timbered buildings was built by the powerful Warwick Guilds in the late 1300s to conduct Guild business from the town centre.

In the reign of Elizabeth I, the Guilds gave the buildings to Robert Dudley, the Queen's favourite courtier, to create a home for the Brethren - soldiers injured in the wars of the Tudor age. 

Centuries on, the site remains home to the Master and Brethren and has recently undergone a £4.5million transformation funded by the NLHF (National Lottery Heritage Fund) in partnership with other national and local community donors to turn it into a modern, authentic visitor attraction. 

One of the highly anticipated moments of the restoration was the reveal of the commemorative seal of King James I of England (and VI of Scotland), whose visit to Warwick and The Lord Leycester in 1617 came on the 50th year of his accession to the throne in Scotland (he only became King in England in 1603). 

The King was due to be hosted by Sir Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. James I had given Greville Warwick Castle in 1604, which at this point was in a ruinous state. Greville had ambitions of restoring the castle – which he did, but not in time for the King's visit in 1617.

As a result, Greville hosted the King at the Great Hall of The Lord Leycester. The King had a known relationship with the Patrons of The Lord Leycester, having given Robert Sidney the title Viscount L'Isle in 1605 – a title the family still holds today. 

The Lord Leycester still has two physical reminders of the King's visit and the lavish three-day event it involved. The first is a custom-built chair for King James I – tradition tells the story that the chair had to be custom built for the King as standard chairs were too narrow due to the vast amounts of padding he wore under his clothes!

The second reminder is the commemorative seal mounted on a wall in the Great Hall, covered since the restoration programme in the 1960s but uncovered in the recent renovations and now on show. 

To buy tickets for the banquet, visit https://www.lordleycester.com/lord-leycester-events/king-james-i-banquet/. 

For more information on the Lord Leycester and its programme of activities visit: https://www.lordleycester.com/.