Deal Bi-millenary Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Walmer Castle (Deal) (Deal, Kent, England)

Year: 1949

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 4

Notes

4–6 August 1949

[4 and 5 August at 7pm, 6 August at 3pm and 7pm]

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Producer [Pageant Master]: Hall, James S.
  • Director: James D. Mugford
  • Mistress of the Robes: June Langdon
  • Stage Manager: C.J. Roberts
  • Assistant Stage Manager: Agnes Ford
  • Continuity and Prompter: W.B. West
  • Costume Secretary: Miss R. Hollow
  • Associate Directors: Wray Hunt, Olivia Pittocks, Joan Sanders, David S. McKay
  • Pageant Master-at-Arms: Charles J. Terry (Captain, RM)
  • Master of Music: E.S. Stride, LTCL, FRCO
  • Mistress of the Dance: Sylvia Innes Barron
  • Music Orchestrated by F. Norman and E.S. Stride
  • Scenery: Peter Lucas, Ronald Peacock, Rosemary Howard, Norman Cavell, Alison Hurd, Arthur E. Peacock, Sylvia Gee
  • Property Master: Arthur E. Peacock
  • Costume Secretary: Miss R. Hollow
  • Amplification and Electrical Equipment: Bernard Bright

Names of executive committee or equivalent

Pageant and Programme Committee

  • Chairman: Councillor Norman Cavell
  • Hon. Organising Secretaries: George E. Ford and J.C. Bodker
  • Ald. W.P.D. Stebbing
  • James S. Hall, OBE
  • L.A. Stevenson
  • Rosemary Howard
  • G. Russell
  • C.W. Langdon
  • W.B. West (Programme Secretary)
  • A.J. Baker
  • Arthur E. Peacock

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

  • Hall, James S.
  • Cavell, Norman

Names of composers

n/a

Notes

  • Hall, James S.
  • Elgar, Edward
  • Briding, E.
  • Hall, M.V.

Numbers of performers

Financial information

  • Expenses: £1600
  • Profit of £263

The associated Fayre cost £370 and made £52 profit. [Source: Dover Express, 2 September 1949, 6.]

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

Ostensibly the Bi-millenary of the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55BC

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 3000 - 4000

Notes

The Dover Express noted that an average of 900 attended each of the four performances. (Dover Express, 19 August 1949, 11)

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

10s 6d–2s 6d.

Associated events

There was a fayre, attended by around 5000 people.

Pageant outline

Prologue.

Episode 1. Caesar’s Landing, BC 55.

Britons are afraid of the coming Romans. The Seventh and Tenth legions approach, led by Julius Caesar. Caesar rewards a brave standard bearer.

Episode 2. Deal and Domesday, AD 1085

Saxons complain about tax. The King’s commissioners and Clerk enter, followed by the Abbot of St Augustine’s and William of Poitiers. Various people present their cases and their land is assessed and taxed. The Saxons are resentful, but predict that the Norman and Saxon blood will mingle to create English blood. Compline begins. The scene concludes with a conversation between Earl Godwin and the Devil about the exploits of the former, including putting out Prince Alfred’s eyes. Godwin laments the quicksand around Deal, however the Devil notes that ‘before then will they bring greatness and prosperity to this land of Deal, for inside your ghastly quicksand lies the finest harbour in all the country, where the ships and navies of all nations may lie snug at anchor through centuries of years.’ (Deal Bi-millenary Pageant (Deal, 1949), 24.)

Episode 3. Building Three Castles, AD 1539

Sir Edward Ryngeley discusses plans with Stephen Von Haschenberg about the construction of the castles. A messenger announces the arrival of Henry VIII and Henry Fitzroy, his son. The King insists that the castles must be built. Children present Henry with a bouquet and he extols them to defend the coast from foreign invaders.

Interval

Episode 4. Our Royal Charter, AD 1699

A Sergeant at Mace drags a captive in. There is much expectation that the commissioners will soon arrive to grant the town’s charter. The Mayor enters and reads the Charter, complaining that it cost £337 0s 3 ½ d. There is celebration, but and the council decides to impose rates of 2d. There is worries about the cost of this but the Mayor suggests that ‘perchance some day the Rate may reach 22s., and the riot not yet occur.’ (30) There is then talk of installing new offices such as a Surveyor and a Town Planning Committee.

Episode 5. Exit Press Gang, AD 1702

A drunken Mr Phillips is accosted and apprehended by a press gang under Marquis Carmarthen. Phillips defends his rights, assisted by the crowd and a riot breaks out. The Mayor orders the Press Gang to leave.

Episode 6. No Pubs, No Trollops, AD 1703

People are afraid that the zealous new mayor will close down the pubs on a Sunday. The Mayor puts Robert Sutton, who protests, in the stocks. Mary Forrest calls the Mayor ‘an old toss-pot’ and is seized and whipped. The Mayor ejects all the prostitutes from the town as well.

Interval

Episode 7. Smuggler’s Doom, AD 1784

  • Part I. The Duke of Cumberland, Prince of Wales and Elizabeth Carter are in Deal.
  • Part II. The Burning of the Boats.

Smugglers are apprehended by Revenue men and hussars, who capture them and burn their boats.

Episode 8. Walmer Castle, Trafalgar Eve, AD 1805

William Pitt and Lady Hester Stanhope receive guests including Nelson and talk about the latter’s naval plans. The Devil and Godwyn talk about national heroes, of Nelson’s valour and of Pitt’s reputation.

Episode 9. Hell Fire Corner.

The Second World War in Deal, during which the town is bombed and attacked by missiles. Britannia proclaims her heroes.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Caesar [Gaius Julius Caesar] (100–44 BC) politician, author, and military commander
  • Godwine [Godwin], earl of Wessex (d. 1053) magnate
  • Poitiers, William of (b. c.1020, d. after 1087) biographer
  • Henry VIII (1491–1547) king of England and Ireland
  • Fitzroy, Henry, duke of Richmond and Somerset (1519–1536) royal bastard
  • Osborne, Peregrine, second duke of Leeds (bap. 1659, d. 1729) naval officer [marquess of Carmarthen]
  • William Augustus, Prince, duke of Cumberland (1721–1765) army officer
  • George IV (1762–1830) king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and king of Hanover
  • Carter, Elizabeth (1717–1806) poet, translator, and writer
  • Pitt, William [known as Pitt the younger] (1759–1806) prime minister
  • Stanhope, Lady Hester Lucy (1776–1839) traveller

Musical production

Deal and District Orchestral Society (conducted by F. Norman), the Band of the Depot Royal Marines, Deal, and members of the Deal and Walmer Handelian Society

Newspaper coverage of pageant

The Times
Dover Express
Thanet Advertiser

Book of words

None known

Other primary published materials

  • Deal Bi-millenary Pageant: Souvenir Programme. Deal, 1949. [Price 2s 6d.]

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Programme held in Kent History and Library, Maidstone, Reference K/Deal

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Deal’s Bi-millenary Pageant, which began counting with the first Roman invasion of 55BC was held by kind permission of the Lord Warden and Admiral of the Cinque Ports, the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill. Although there were a number of famous figures in the pageant, several of the episodes focused on everyday life. As James S. Hall wrote in the Pageant Programme:

The history of Deal is not pageantry in itself, it is the grim story of recurrent hardship and peril. Brave men have faced the constant threat of invasion for two thousand years with a dour struggle for existence between the wars. Their breach has been the threshold of England’s history, before them, their main industry – the hungry sea. This is the story of the Savages of Deal.1

In his own contribution to the programme, the Mayor of Deal reiterated the town’s constant struggles to survive, suggesting that the harsh environment made it necessary to avoid customs and excise through smuggling:

If for long we had to bow to Sandwich, once given our freedom we have played our part, even if it meant, when Customs duties were anathema to quite respectable people, much misplaced energy in robbing ourselves of the wherewithal through which the State was kept going; when many other taxes had not been thought of.2

The pageant can claim to be unique in being narrated by the Devil, who at key junctures praised the town’s natural harbour and sided with the locals against authority in a discussion held in Hell with Earl Godwin, a Kentish magnate and rebel. With the Pageant of Chilham Castle (1946), Deal’s Bi-millenary Pageant is indicative of several characterful pageants held in Kent in the years immediately after the Second World War. The Pageant was attended by around 3600 and made a small profit of £263.3

Footnotes

1. ^ Deal Bi-millenary Pageant: Souvenir Programme (Deal, 1949), 12.
2. ^ W.P.D. Stebbing, Mayor of Deal, ‘Foreword’, in Ibid, 5.
3. ^ Dover Express, 19 August 1949, 11 and 2 September 1949, 6.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Deal Bi-millenary Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1383/