A Pageant of Two Parishes: Ingatestone and Fryerning

Pageant type

Notes

The pageant celebrated the history of two separate parishes.

Jump to Summary

Performances

Place: Unknown (Ingatestone) (Ingatestone, Essex, England)

Year: 1953

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

June 1953

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Written and Devised by [Pageant Master]: Christy, V.M.

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)

  • Christy, V.M.

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion


Coronation of Elizabeth II

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: n/a

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Episode 1: Pre-History

a) The tool-maker (Paleolithic or Old Stone Age)

b) The Stone (Neolithic or New Stone Age)

Episode 2: Historic Era

Episode 2: Roman Horseman and British Slave, c.300AD

Interlude of Ing-folk, Danes, Saxons, East Saxons

Episode 3: Domesday Survey (1087)

Second Interlude on Mill Green

a) Robert the Monk

b) The Potters

Episode 4: The Font from Normandy (1157) and an Abbess of Barking

Third interlude

a) Beggars and a black canon

b) A lost groat: pedlar and peasant

c) Bowmen of England, the old army

d) The Woolpack

e) Dissolution of Alien Monasteries (1414)

f) St. Mary’s Church tower (c.1500)

Episode 5: Visit of Queen Elizabeth Tudor (July 1561)

Fourth Interlude

a) Will Kemp’s Morris Dance

b) A Puritan Traveller

c) The Sea Captain

d) A waggoner and four walking strangers

e) Gentlemen Players (1662)

f) A King and Queen at Ingatestone (20 October 1692)

Episode 6: The Street in its Heyday (1761)

Fifth Interlude: In the mirror of Memory, Glimpses of 100 years (1853-1953)

Finale and Epilogue: To-day and To-morrow

God Save the Queen

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Kemp, William (d. in or after 1610?) actor
  • Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland
  • William III and II (1650–1702) king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and prince of Orange
  • Mary II (1662–1694) queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland

Musical production



Newspaper coverage of pageant

Book of words

V.M. Christy. A Pageant of Two Parishes Ingatestone and Fryerning. Essex, 1953.

Other primary published materials

n/a

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of the book of words in the British Library.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

This was an example of a village-level pageant held to mark the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was unusual in that it was a pageant of not one, but two, local parishes: Ingatestone and Fryerning, both in Essex. It demonstrates the vitality of the pageant form into the 1950s, and around the time of the Coronation in particular. As might be expected in the circumstances, the content of the pageant made much of royal associations, with Elizabeth I – who visited the locality in 1561 – getting a whole episode to herself. It is relatively rare for books of words of village pageants to survive, if they existed at all, but in this case, a copy is preserved in the British Library.

Footnotes

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘A Pageant of Two Parishes: Ingatestone and Fryerning’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1099/