Ye Olde Merstham Pageant, 1220–1720

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Grounds of Merstham House (Merstham) (Merstham, Surrey, England)

Year: 1920

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 2

Notes

30 June 1920 at 3pm and 6.30pm

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Director [Pageant Master]: Gritton, Eric
  • Secretary: H.J. Glassup
  • Treasurer: Dr Jeffree
  • Stage Manager: Mrs Topham Richardson
  • Conductor: Mr Glassup
  • Mistress of Robes: Mrs D.K.C. Birt

Names of executive committee or equivalent

Executive Committee

  • Mr and Mrs Topham Richardson
  • Mrs Weir
  • Mrs Burt
  • Mrs Spalding
  • Mrs Wall
  • Mrs Andrew Walker
  • Mr Andrew Walker
  • Mr Eric Gritton

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

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

20

About 20 performers

Financial information

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

Seven hundredth anniversary of the Dedication of the Parish Church of St Katharine.

Audience information

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

Notes

A large audience attended (probably several hundred).

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

5s.–1s. 3d.

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Prologue

Episode I. Plantagenet

The village street, thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Everyday life is broken by the return of Sir Roger de Merstham from the Crusade. He meets monks from Reigate Abbey and announces his intention of building a church to St Katharine, hitherto unknown in England. He discusses plans with monks, masons, an architect, and the villagers. The scene ends with an ecclesiastical procession to the dedication of the church.

Episode II. Tudor

The dissolution of the monastery under Henry VIII. This is followed by the depiction of Sir John and Lady Elmbrugger who owned Merstham, and the marriage of their daughter to Nicholas Dannatt, with festivities and Morris dancing.

Episode III. Stuart

A May-Day holiday, with a part of Cavaliers in the inn, enjoying the dancing. A party of Puritans rebuke the villagers and try to stop the festivities. The Cavaliers and Sir John Southcote drive off the Puritans and a fight is heard in the distance.

Episode IV. Georgian

A stone which built London Bridge was quarried in Merstham and carried by the old rail-road. The story of the episode is the sale of the stone to London merchants and their subsequent hold-up by highwaymen.

Final March Past and Tableau

March of all characters, plus modern times with soldiers, sailors, Scouts, Red Cross nurses, Girl Guides, etc. ‘God Save the King.’

Key historical figures mentioned

n/a

Musical production

Orchestra conducted by Eric Gritton.

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Surrey Mirror

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

  • Ye Olde Merstham Pageant, 1220–1720. Programme. Np, 1920.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Surrey History Centre, Woking: Photograph album, cuttings, etc., 3533/1; Programme, P23/3/3.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Good friends, you’ve come, this summer afternoon
To join us while we try for just one hour
To stay the rushing tide of time, and turn the wheel reverse,
To let our minds slip backward through the Centuries, and
Pretend we see ourselves, living as those who went before us lived,
Wearing their garb, walking their daily path.1

So declared the prologue to the Merstham Pageant, which told the story of the tiny village in what was still a rural part of Surrey from seven hundred to two hundred years before: ‘The idea of the pageant is to try and represent scenes in the history of the village, legendary and authentic, from the time of the Dedication of the Parish Church of St Katharine, seven hundred years ago, until the present day. The site chosen for the stage is part of the old High Road to London which was altered to the present road in comparatively modern times.’2 The idea of a pageant was mooted early in 1920. The Surrey Mirror caught the sense of anticipation: ‘The whole programme promises to provide a novel and praiseworthy effort to amuse and delight many hundreds of expected guests, and has created a great stir of expectation and interest throughout the whole neighbourhood.’3

The pageant itself, which told the history of the village in four brief scenes, told the account through ‘gesticulations, harangues, and inaudible conversations’ which ‘conveyed the impressions of the various episodes, and enabled the audience to follow clearly the features introduced’.4 The newspaper was particularly struck by the pathos at the end of Episode III, which ‘closed with a note of sadness, foreshadowing the tragedy to follow’ (the turmoil of the English Civil War). The pageant concluded with a final procession which ‘assembled in formation in front of the inn with Britannia as the centre figure’.5 The weather was excellent and proved ‘a red-letter day in the history of Merstham, and the wonderful harmony with which the whole four episodes were enacted reflects much credit on the organisers’, while the ‘applause attested to the delight of the large audiences assembled.’6 The Surrey Mirror noted that ‘attendance showed that not only Merstham, but the district, is ripe for pageantry. All the incidents were closely followed, and the applause testified to the delight of the large audiences assembled.’7 The pageant, indeed, was an event that had been justifiably anticipated by the district and even by the county whose last major pageant had been the Pageant of Farnham (1910). The tradition of pageantry in Surrey, which was revived on a grand scale in the Pageant of Guildford (1925), proved to be one of the most enduring in the country, and the Merstham Pageant was a fine example of inter-war village pageantry.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Ye Olde Merstham Pageant, 1220–1720 (Np, 1920), unpaginated.
  2. ^ Ibid.
  3. ^ Surrey Mirror, 25 June 1920, 5.
  4. ^ Surrey Mirror, 2 July 1920, 7.
  5. ^ Ibid.
  6. ^ Ibid.
  7. ^ Ibid.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Ye Olde Merstham Pageant, 1220–1720’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1128/