St Albans Millenary Pageant

Pageant type

town

Jump to Summary

Performances

Place: Verulamium Park (St Albans) (St Albans, Hertfordshire, England)

Year: 1948

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 6

Notes

21–26 June 1948

Name of pageant master and other named staff

Pageant Master: Swinson, Cyril
Master of the Music: Arthur Waller, ARCM
Mistress of the Robes: Mrs J. Miller
Master of the Properties: Harold Corble
Mistress of the Horse: Miss Daphne Day
Mistress of the Folk Dance: Mollie du Cane
Secretary: D. Ivor Davies, BA
Marshal of the Arena: Arthur Swinson
Personal Assistants to Cyril Swinson: Brenda Swinson and Leslie V. Hider
Cyril Swinson's Secretary: Katharine Press

Names of executive committee or equivalent

General Committee

President: The Right Hon. the Earl of Verulam
Chairman: His Worship the Mayor of St Albans, Councillor W.R. Hiskett
Vice-Chairmen: The Very Rev. the Dean of St Albans, Alderman W. Bird, MBE, JP

Executive and Finance Committee

Chairman: Captain J.M. Donaldson
The Mayor of St Albans
The Vicar of St Michael’s
The Vicar of St Peter’s
The Vicar of St Stephen’s
The Headmaster of St Albans School
Alderman James Baum
Alderman W. Bird, MBE, JP
George Beadle
H.E. Goode (Old Albanian Club)
John E. Harrison, FIPA
C.W. Johnstone
George Richardson
L.F. Vick
Pageant-Master: C.W. Swinson
Secretary: D. Ivor Davies

Publicity Committee

Chairman: John E. Harrison, FIPA
G. Dorman
W. Fisher
J.W. Haworth
P. Scott-Martin, MC, TD
Press Officer: H.B. Carrington

Transport Committee

Chairman: C.W. Johnstone
C.C. Gomm;
A. Shaw
C.J. Writh

Ground Committee

Chairman: A.S. Moody (City Surveyor)

Seating Committee

Chairman: H.F. Stovell

Box Office Committee

Chairman: A. Donald

Horse Committee

Chairman: S.C. King
Miss Daphne Day
Secretary: Miss Betty Bates

Costume Committee

Chairman: George Beadle
Mrs J. Miller
Secretary: Mrs E. Bradley
Dinah Briggs
Mrs M. A Carey
Dorothy Corble
Margaret Corble
Mrs C. Dymoke Green
Mrs Doreen Grieve
Mrs W.T. Marsh
Mrs L. Mee
Gwendoline Mee
Iris Mee

Properties Committee

Chairman: Harold Corble
Secretary: Miss M. Killick
Philip Bradley
Michael Briggs
Alec Fieber
Harold Westell

Music Committee

Chairman: Arthur Waller, ARCM
Music Organiser: Lewis Covey-Crump
A. Meredith Davies MA BMus FRCO
Robert Lindsay BSc AIC LRAM

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

Swinson, Cyril

Names of composers

Elgar, Edward
Covey-Crump, Lewis
Lindsay, Robert
Davies, Meredith
Foster, Arnold
Holst, Gustav
Locke, Matthew
Purcell, Henry
Smetana, Bedřich
Walton, William

Numbers of performers

1000

1000 actors; 200 in the choir. The Mayor of St Albans, W.R. Hiskett, played William Canon Smith, Mayor of St Albans 1877 (Episode 9). Other councillors also played their predecessors.

Financial information

Expenditure
Including [these do not sum to the total]:
Stand, etc. £6254. 12s. 5d.
Costumes £1678. 17s. 0d.
Music £686. 1s. 11d.
Horses £212. 10s. 7d.
Publicity £1627. 17s. 18d.
Total expenditure: £11704. 18s. 3d.¹

Receipts

Including [these do not sum to the total]:
Tickets £12716. 16s. 2d.
Programmes (profit) £1844. 1s. 7d.
Car park takings: £238. 18s. 6d. minus £69. 19s. 8d. paid to NCP.
Total receipts: £14986. 19s. 6d.

Profit: £3282. 1s. 3d.

Object of any funds raised

Home for the elderly

Linked occasion

Millennium of 948AD (traditional date of foundation of abbey, town and school at St Albans)

Audience information

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

Notes

It appears from the city council papers that most performances were sold out.

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

Not known

Associated events

Exhibition of city charters and plate at the County Museum [now Museum of St Albans].
Folk dance festival organised by English Folk Dance and Song Society. More than 1400 people attended.
City flag flown at public library during pageant week, and photographic exhibition of St Albans’s historic buildings in the library.

Pageant outline

Prologue

The pageant opens with the ‘Pageant Hymn’. The chorus introduces the pageant, explaining how Abbot Ulsinus first established the modern town 1000 years ago.

Episode I. The Martyrdom of St Alban, 303

The chief magistrate of Verulamium reads an order of emperor Diocletian denouncing Christianity. Alban and his ‘Friend’ [St Amphibalus] swap clothes so that Amphibalus can avoid being captured. Arrested by the magistrate, Alban admits to being a Christian and refuses to worship the Roman gods. He is led away to be executed, and as he goes he affirms his belief in God.

Episode II. King Offa Founds the Abbey, 793

A group of men arrives on a scene close to the old Roman city of Verulamium. They include ‘Humbert’ [Higbert] the archbishop of Lichfield, Unwona bishop of Leicester and Ceowolf bishop of Linsdey. A local man tells them that there is a small Christian church, St Germain’s. Offa ‘and his Queen’ [Quendrida or Cynethryth, not named in the script] arrive, and are welcomed by the archbishop. He is told that Alban’s relics have disappeared, but Offa reports than an angel had visited him. The angel directs the group to the relics, which are dug up. Offa vows to build an abbey, and pronounces Wisigood the abbot.

Episode III. Ulsinus Has a Plan, 948

Abbot Ulsinus is the only speaking character in this scene. To a large group of monks, nuns, country people, schoolboys and soldiers, he makes a speech explaining how the abbey of St Albans has become a centre of pilgrimage. He decrees that three new churches be built, and orders the establishment of a market and the school. He predicts the growth of a large town. Around him are carried models of the three churches.

Episode IV. Holy Day, 1440 (visit of Henry VI to St Albans Abbey)

This is largely based on Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2. The scene begins with a dance; there is a market or fair taking place. Henry VI arrives on the scene and is greeted by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and his duchess, Cardinal Beaufort and the Earl of Suffolk. A man runs out from the crowd proclaiming a miracle: a blind man has got back his sight. The man, Simpcox from Berwick, and his wife are questioned by Henry and Gloucester, and it turns out that he is lying: he was never blind. Simpcox and his wife are ordered to be whipped in every market town on their way back to Berwick. The abbot, John of Wheathampstead [Whethamstede], apologises to Henry for the ‘rude buffoon’ Simpcox, and Henry promises to clarify the abbey’s charters.

Episode V. Queen Elizabeth I Visits Gorhambury, 1572

The scene opens with Sir Nicholas Bacon and the young Francis preparing, with the mayor, for the queen’s visit. She arrives with great majesty. She gives a speech remembering her childhood spent nearby. There is morris dancing and cheering.

Episode VI. King Charles I Visits the School, 1626

Schoolboys come running in from all directions, and the king’s party approaches on horseback. The headmaster welcomes the king, who is accompanied by the duke of Buckingham. The schoolboys present, in mime, a history of the school (a sort of pageant-within-a-pageant), narrated by a ‘chronicler’. This tells of the formation of the school in 948, some of its most famous figures (Nicholas Breakspear, Matthew Paris, Sir Nicholas Bacon), and the early printing press, as well as abbot Hugh of Eversden, who improved discipline among the schoolboys in the fourteenth century; the mime also depicts royal charters from Edward VI, Queen Mary and James I. A boy recites the school prayer, and the king thanks the boys and allows them a special holiday.

Episode VII. The Civil War, 1643

The date is 16 January 1643. The country is disturbed—news of the war is being discussed, heatedly, at the town’s market. The sheriff makes a speech attempting to recruit an army for the king. A royal proclamation is read, but is interrupted by the arrival of a band of Parliamentary troopers on horseback, led by Oliver Cromwell. Fighting begins, and the sheriff is defeated. Most of the crowd follow Cromwell to the Red Lion pub.

Episode VIII. Whigs vs Tories: An Election Scene, 1722

The Whig and Tory candidates (Viscount Grimston and Joshua Lomax, and William Clayton and William Gore, respectively) make separate processional entrances. Grimston and Lomax speak to the mayor: they have heard rumours of malpractice. The Duchess of Marlborough enters and speaks to the mayor: she has told him to swear in new freemen to ensure that the Tories win. The Duchess hands the mayor a bag of gold, he hands the money to the town clerk, and the clerk and his servants start using the money to entice the Whig supporters to the Tory side. The mayor declares Clayton and Gore elected. The Whigs erupt in fury, and there is a riot. The Duke of Marlborough himself appears briefly at the end of the scene, though without a speaking part.²

Episode IX. St Albans is a City, 1877

The town crier gives notice of an announcement by the mayor. Crowds gather, and a procession enters, including the mayor, the dean, the bishop – Thomas Legh Claughton – and councillors. The mayor and bishop give short addresses: the bishop declares that the abbey is now a cathedral and St Albans a diocese, and the mayor reports that St Albans is now a city. The crowd cries ‘St Albans is a City’. There is a band, dancing, and cricket playing, and men with banners that say ‘Free Refreshment’. The crowd melts away, leaving only the cricketers. The cricketers then ‘trickle off’, and the bowler runs to the refreshment tent.

Epilogue

The chorus ends the pageant, thanking God for St Alban, Ulsinus and others. The performers come forward and sing the ‘Pageant Hymn’ again.

Key historical figures mentioned

Alban [St Alban, Albanus] (d. c.303?) Christian martyr in Roman Britain
Offa (d. 796) king of the Mercians
Cynethryth (fl. c.770–798) queen of the Mercians and abbess of Cookham
Hygeberht [Higbert] (d. in or after 803) archbishop of Lichfield
Unwona (d. 800x03) bishop of Leicester
Henry VI (1421–1471) king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
Humphrey [Humfrey or Humphrey of Lancaster] duke of Gloucester [called Good Duke Humphrey] (1390–1447) prince, soldier, and literary patron
Beaufort, Henry [called the Cardinal of England] (1375?–1447) bishop of Winchester and cardinal
Pole, William de la, first duke of Suffolk (1396–1450) administrator and magnate
Whethamstede [Bostock], John (c.1392–1465) scholar and abbot of St Albans
Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland
Bacon, Sir Nicholas (1510–1579) lawyer and administrator
Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Alban (1561–1626) lord chancellor, politician, and philosopher
Charles I (1600–1649) king of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Villiers, George, first duke of Buckingham (1592–1628) royal favourite
Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Paris, Matthew (c.1200–1259) historian, Benedictine monk, and polymath
Adrian IV [real name Nicholas Breakspear] (d. 1159) pope
Edward VI (1537–1553) king of England and Ireland
Mary I (1516–1558) queen of England and Ireland
James VI and I (1566–1625) king of Scotland, England, and Ireland
Churchill, John, first duke of Marlborough (1650–1722) army officer and politician
Churchill [née Jenyns], Sarah, duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744) politician and courtier
Grimston, William Luckyn, first Viscount Grimston (1683–1756), politician
Claughton, Thomas Legh (1808–1892) bishop of St Albans

Musical production

Orchestra, led by Marjorie Bose: St Albans Orchestral Society, St Albans Youth Orchestra and students from the Royal College of Music.

Choir: St Albans Bach Choir, St Albans United Choir, St Albans Musical Society, parish church choirs of St Albans, choir of Luton Parish Church, ‘and other St Albans musical and choral societies’.

The following pieces were performed:

Elgar. ‘Triumphal March from Caractacus’ (Overture).
L. Covey-Crump. Fanfares and the Pageant Hymn (Prologue).
Robert Lindsay. Incidental Music (Episode I).
Meredith Davies. Incidental Music and Song of Praise (Episode II).
Plainsong Ps. 27, ‘Dominus illuminator’ (Episode III).
Plainsong, ‘Vexilla Regis’ (Episode III).
‘O filii et filiae’. Ancient church melody, arr. Walford Davies (Episode III).
Arnold Foster. Incidental music from ‘Suite on Folk Tunes’ (Episode IV).
‘The Agincourt Song’, arr. L. Covey-Crump (Episode IV).
Holst. Ps. 148, ‘Lord who had made us for Thine own’ (Episode IV).
Robert Lindsay. Fanfares (Episode IV).
Arnold Foster. Incidental music from ‘Suite on Folk Tunes’ (Episode V).
Matthew Locke. ‘Musick for the King’s Sackbuts’ (Episode V).
Robert Lindsay. Music for Brass (Episode V).
Traditional Morris Dance (Episode V).
Purcell arr. Brown. Incidental music from ‘The Faerie Queene’ (Episode VI).
Traditional Sword Dance (Episode VI).
Purcell arr. Brown; Incidental music (Episode VII).
Robert Lindsay. Alarums and exit music (Episode VII).
‘Lillibullero’, arr. Alan Paul (Episode VIII).
Holst. ‘Turn Back O Man’ (Episode IX).
Trad. ‘Nottingham Swing’ (Episode IX).
Smetana. Polka from ‘The Bartered Bride’ (Episode IX).
Walton. ‘Crown Imperial’ (Epilogue).
L. Covey Crump. ‘The Pageant Hymn’ (Epilogue).
Elgar. ‘Pomp and Circumstance March’, no. 4 (Epilogue).

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Herts Advertiser
The Times

Book of words

St Albans Millenary Pageant 948-1948: Souvenir Programme, 21st-26th June 1948. St Albans, 1948.

St Albans Central Library, LOC.791.624.

Other primary published materials

n/a

The book of words was also the souvenir programme. (See above.)

References in secondary literature

Freeman, Mark. ‘“Splendid Display; Pompous Spectacle”: Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century Britain’. Social History 38 (2013): 423-55. Focus is on the four pageants at St Albans during the twentieth century.
___. St Albans: A History. Lancaster, 2008. At pp. 303-4.
Newell, Terence. Ten of the Best: A Life in the Company of Ten during Its First Fifty Years. St Albans, 1985. Chapter 11. Copy in St Albans Central Library, 792.0942585.

Archival holdings connected to pageant

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS), Off Acc.1162/3602: papers on 1948 pageant. Includes typed report, minutes of committees and financial summary. Also references in the St Albans City Council minutes, held at HALS.
St Albans Museums, various boxes and albums of photographs and pageant ephemera (uncatalogued). Includes photographs of episodes not seen elsewhere.
St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society library, Old Town Hall, St Albans: folder of photographs and pageant ephemera; copies of pageant programme/book of words. 25-minute DVD of pageant highlights.
Beardsmore Collection, Hudson Memorial Library, St Albans Cathedral: various pageant ephemera, including postcards.
TV/radio coverage of pageant: Picture Page; Children’s Hour.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

The Millenary Pageant of 1948 was the second time a historical pageant had been staged in St Albans. The first was in 1907, during the wave of ‘pageant fever’ that swept Britain before the First World War. This had involved 3,000 performers and a choir of 200, and there was a grandstand with a capacity of 4,000. A reasonable profit had been made, shared between the local museum and hospitals. The 1907 pageant had depicted eight scenes of local history, ending – as was typical – with a visit to the town by Elizabeth I.³

Forty-one years later, St Albans staged its second historical pageant in Verulamium Park, amid the ruins of the Roman town that had stood on the site. The early post-war years, particularly the 1950s, saw another outbreak of ‘pageant fever’, but St Albans was one of the earliest of the post-war pageants. The idea seems to have come from the General Purposes Committee of the city council, which first suggested a pageant in November 1946.⁴ The timing was particularly appropriate: as The Times noted, 1948 was the 1,000th anniversary of the foundation of the town, school and churches of St Albans.⁵ The pageant depicted scenes from the Roman era, through the medieval and early modern periods, and ended with an episode set in the nineteenth century. Two scenes stand out in particular. ‘Ulsinus Has a Plan’ was set in 948 AD, when, according to tradition, abbot Ulsinus or Wulsin laid out what would become the town of St Albans, and established the school and the three churches of St Stephen, St Michael and St Peter. In this scene performers carried models of the three churches into the pageant arena. The last episode, ‘St Albans Is a City’, depicted the joyful celebrations that accompanied the royal charter of 1877 elevating St Albans to city status, as well as the creation of the diocese of St Albans in the same year. Here members of the city council, including the mayor W. R. Hiskett, played their own predecessors from 1877.⁶ Other scenes included the martyrdom of St Alban, the establishment of the abbey by King Offa in 793 AD, and bribery and corruption at the general election of 1722. There was also a visit by Elizabeth I to Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of Francis, at nearby Gorhambury House in 1572.

The pageant-master and script-writer of 1948 was Cyril Swinson. Born in St Albans in 1911, Swinson was a publisher and author, who wrote under the pseudonym Hugh Fisher. He was a founder member of a local theatre group, the Company of Ten, which is still in existence. Swinson’s brother Arthur, also a prolific author and radio and TV scriptwriter, was ‘Marshal of the Arena’. Cyril Swinson went on to produce many more pageants in the 1950s and early 1960s, before his premature death in 1963.⁷ He was not, however, the council’s first choice, either for script-writer or pageant-master. Ambitiously, they first approached the author Dorothy L. Sayers to write the script. She declined, and the council then asked Lawrence du Garde Peach, who had been a notable theatrical figure during the interwar period, and who later wrote the Ladybird Books Adventures from History series. Peach, however, demanded a fee of 250 guineas, which was beyond the means of the council. The first choice for pageant-master was also too expensive, and so Swinson took both roles, and almost by accident launched himself on a career as one of the most prolific pageant-masters of the post-war era.⁸

Preparations for the pageant of 1948 were heavily affected by post-war austerity. By September 1947, arrangements for the pageant were in place, but the council reported that ‘the economic state of the country as a whole led to grave doubts as to whether the Pageant would be allowed to take place at all’.⁹ The council consulted Stafford Cripps, the Minister of Economic Affairs, and the Home Secretary James Chuter Ede. Although it is not clear what these senior government ministers told the council, it was decided to scale down the ambitious aims for a pageant with 2,000 performers, and instead to stage a ‘pageant-play’ with 500 or 600. A pageant-play would have less spectacle and more dialogue: this meant that it would be cheaper to stage, but that it would require more rehearsal. Smaller pageants had taken place since the war, notably at Chilham Castle in Kent, where 600 performers were watched by a total of more than 10,000 people in 1946.¹⁰ St Albans drew inspiration from the pageant at Chilham.

In the end, a cast of around 1,000 appeared in the St Albans pageant, which featured some of the spectacle of the Edwardian and interwar pageants, but at a more modest cost. The costumes were under the direction of ‘Mistress of the Robes’ Mrs J. Miller, ‘many ingenious ways being found to overcome the shortage of suitable materials’. The expected cost of the pageant was reduced following confirmation that the pageants would not be subject to the entertainments tax, on the grounds that it was ‘of a wholly educational nature’. As the council reminded the government, some of the performers were schoolchildren. The entertainments tax was levied from 1916 to 1960, in the face of much opposition, and it was a relief for the organisers of the St Albans pageant to be granted exemption.¹¹ A souvenir programme, containing the full script of the pageant, was printed on the thin paper characteristic of the period, and priced at 2s.6d. It contained advertisements for many local business, some of which invited visitors to come and see their premises.¹² In the early post-war years St Albans was a designated ‘expansion town’, and was aiming to attract new industries and residents.¹³

Civic pride was at the centre of the pageant. There was a specially written pageant hymn, singing the city’s praises; the city flag was flown from the town hall for the duration of pageant week; and there was an associated exhibition of city charters and corporation plate in the museum. Swinson’s avowed aim was ‘to stimulate pride in the city’.¹⁴ The highlight of the pageant – and, for various reasons, the occasion of the most memorable performance – was the visit of Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, on 22 June. This provided an opportunity for ceremony: the ‘civic heads’ were presented to the Queen before the pageant, and others got to meet her afterwards. According to one local historian, the arrival of the Queen was a beautiful moment: ‘a beautiful rainbow seemed to encircle the Abbey [i.e. cathedral] tower … the most spectacular effect that any producer could have dreamed of’. Another member of the audience, however, had a different recollection of the night of Her Majesty’s visit. During the finale, a lone horseman led the entire cast on a march past the royal box – and at this very moment the horse let out a long and loud fart, which lasted the whole hundred yards of its walk.¹⁵

Wide local participation was an important feature of the pageant, and Cyril Swinson emphasised the benefits to the whole community that the event could bring. Even those with little interest in history, he thought, benefited from taking part in the organisation of the pageant. One participant enthusiastically remembered:

Nobody who has not been in a pageant can truly savour the atmosphere which pervades the community. After some weeks of rehearsal in church halls or rain-sodden fields the great day finally arrives. Thousands of people throng the streets leading to the arena and are bustled aside by scurrying monks, mediaeval ladies on bicycles munching sandwiches as they pedal, choleric cavaliers trying to inch their cars through the mob as they reflect on the dinner they will not have, Roman soldiers steering an erratic course through it all with demure Regency ladies simpering on the the pillions, all, in our case, converging on the site of the Roman city of Verulamium.¹⁶

This is not to say that everything went smoothly. Despite the council’s support, the Highways, Buildings and Works Committee was unwilling allow banners to be hung across the street to advertise the pageants. There were also arguments about who should play in each scene, and opposition to the whole thing from a ‘faction’ inside Swinson’s own Company of Ten.¹⁷ Some took the opportunity to complain about post-war austerity and high levels of local taxation. In a letter to the local newspaper, one resident imagined a pageant scene set in 1948 itself:

We will show you how in ’48
St Albans lived, and what they ate
Honoured Bacon in their fashion
Subsisted on a two-ounce ration.
Records tell how Mayor Hiskett
Had for joint a bit of brisket.
Supplemented by a tin of bully;
Waists were not expanded fully.
But old Albanians as in war
Instead of clamouring for more,
Beneath the rationing blows then dealt
Just smiled, and tightened up their belt.
The City Fathers at that date
Extracted a nineteen-shilling rate.
Queues which formed for stuff to eat
Stood mortionless in Peter-street.
So praise the men of ’48
Who stood the buffetings of fate.¹⁸

Despite humorous carping like this, the pageant was widely held to be a success. Paper rationing meant that it was not well reported locally, but, according to one recollection, it ‘captured the imagination of the Press and public the world over, especially as it was one of the first touches of glamour and frivolity after the grim war years’.¹⁹ With substantial takings from ticket sales, as well as a souvenir programme and car park, the pageant made a profit of more than £3,000. This was spent on a home for the elderly, and encouraged St Albans to stage its third pageant in 1953, also with Swinson at the helm. The 1953 pageant, entitled ‘A Masque of the Queens’ in honour of the coronation of Elizabeth I, involved 1,600 performers and had a grandstand capacity of 4,000.²⁰ However, unlike the 1948 event it made a substantial loss, and St Albans never staged a large-scale outdoor pageant again, although there was an indoor pageant-play in 1968.²¹

Footnotes

^ Financial information in folder 2, Off.Acc.1102/3602: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS), Hertford.
^ The pageant-master, Cyril Swinson, noted in the book of words (p. 59) that, ‘although the Duke of Marlborough may have been too ill at the time this episode takes place to appear, it seems permissible to introduce him briefly into the scene’.
^ On the St Albans pageants, see Mark Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display; Pompous Spectacle”: Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Social History, 38 (2013), 423-55; Mark Freeman, St Albans: A History (Lancaster, 2008), 249-51, 303-4.
^ Report on St Albans pageant, 1: folder 1, Off.Acc.1162/3602, HALS.
^ The Times, 21 June 1948, 2.
^ Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 445.
^ Ibid., 439.
^ Report on St Albans pageant, 1. On Peach, see E.D. Mackerness, ‘Peach, Lawrence Du Garde (1890-1974)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004): http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/49367 (accessed 5 January 2016).
^ Report on St Albans pageant, 2.
^ Ibid.; letter from J.M. Donaldson to town clerk and others, 16 April 1947, folder 2, Off.Acc.1162/3602, HALS.
^ Report on 1948 pageant, 5; letter from G.A. Pilgrim to J.M. Donaldson, 16 March 1948: folder 2, Off.Acc.1162/3602, HALS; Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 425, 439.
^ St Albans Millenary Pageant 948-1948: Souvenir Programme, 21-26 June 1948 (St Albans, 1948): St Albans Central Library, LOC.791.624.
^ Freeman, St Albans, 287.
^ Quoted in Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 443.
^ Ibid., 448.
^ Terence Newell, Ten of the Best: A Life in the Company of Ten during Its First Fifty Years (St Albans, 1985), 102: St Albans Central Library, 792.0942585.
^ Ibid., 101-2.
^ Letter from ‘F.A.D.’, Herts Advertiser, 2 July 1948, 4, partly quoted in Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 442.
^ Quoted in Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 439.
^ Ibid., 440; St Albans Pageant 1953: A Masque of the Queens (St Albans, 1953): St Albans Central Library, LOC.791.624.
^ Freeman, ‘“Splendid Display”’, 448-52

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘St Albans Millenary Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1208/

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