Grand Fancie Fayre: Realistic Representation of “Ye Olde Yorke in Mid-Winter”
Pageant type
Performances
Place: City of York Central Mission (York) (York, Yorkshire, West Riding, England)
Year: 1912
Indoors/outdoors: Indoors
Number of performances: 4
Notes
7–14 February 1912 at 7.30pm
Name of pageant master and other named staff
Names of executive committee or equivalent
Executive Committee
- President: Viscount Helmsley, MP
- Chairman of Executive Committee: The
Right Hon. Mayor of York, Ald. Norman Green
Entertainment Committee
- Chairman: Mrs. J.S. Guffick
- Other members: Mr T.P. Cooper, Mr G. Huer, Mr J.
Cookson, Mr F. Kirby, Mr F.W. Rose, Mr T. Martin, Mr G. Sanderson
Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)
Names of composers
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Numbers of performers
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Financial information
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Object of any funds raised
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Linked occasion
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Audience information
Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest
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Associated events
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Pageant outline
Episode I. Front of the ‘Black Swan’, Coney Street
An announcement of the York to London Four Days’ Stage Coach, as well as the Newcastle Stage Coach. Potential passengers discuss which driver is the best and the problems of travel. They drink a health to Christmas Eve. A mother, sending her boy off to school, says goodbye. Further toasts are drunk. The coach departs. A waitress asks Boniface how to secure her true love and he tells her of an old ritual involving swallowing mistletoe berries, writing the name of the beloved and stitching it inside one’s corset. A Herald announces Christmas. The ‘Duke of York’s March’ is played. From inside the Waitresses of the Black Swan sing out.
Episode II. Lady Mayoress’s Christmas Ball
Local notables are introduced and witness a dance of forty York children. The Lord and Lady Mayoress open the ball with a famous minuet.
Finale. A Grand Historic Procession
Key historical figures mentioned
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Musical production
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Newspaper coverage of pageant
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Book of words
- Grand Fancie Fayre: Realistic Representation of ‘Ye Olde Yorke in Mid-Winter’: Pageant Episodes and Book of Words. York, 1912.
Other primary published materials
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References in secondary literature
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Archival holdings connected to pageant
- Copy of Book of Words in the British Library
Sources used in preparation of pageant
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Summary
The Grand Fancie Fayre was certainly on a far-more limited scale than the great York Historical Pageant (1909). Whilst its specific time-period was unspecified, we can be reasonably sure that the pageant was set in either the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, due to the stage coaches. A great deal of the pageant’s message was obviously lost by holding it in mid-February rather than at Christmas.
Footnotes
How to cite this entry
Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Grand Fancie Fayre: Realistic Representation of “Ye Olde Yorke in Mid-Winter”’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1410/