Elsworth School. The School Birthday Pageant 1954–1975
Pageant type
Performances
Place: Elsworth School (Elsworth) (Elsworth, Cambridgeshire, England)
Year: 1975
Indoors/outdoors: Indoors
Number of performances: n/a
Notes
Summer 1975
Name of pageant master and other named staff
- Music: Kathleen Goodger
- Needlework Panel: J. Rollaston and J.
Buckley
- Costumes: Miss Beaumont, Mrs Bienek, Mrs
Walford
- Synopsis: Dr and Mrs Evans
- Loan of Ponies: Mrs Forster and Mrs
Abraham
Names of executive committee or equivalent
n/a
Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)
Names of composers
n/a
Numbers of performers
n/a
Financial information
n/a
Object of any funds raised
n/a
Linked occasion
21st anniversary of the founding of the school.
Audience information
Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest
n/a
Associated events
n/a
Pageant outline
Prologue. The Founding of the four villages, 6th century
Episode 1. Aelfwaru hands the deeds of Elsworth Manor to the Abbot of Ramsey, 1000AD
Episode 2. The Rector of Conington turns Smuggler, 1642
Episode 3. The Holworthy Wedding, 4 September 1776
Episode 4. Elsworth Village School, 2 June 1864
Episode 5. The Bishop of Huntingdon opens the new Extension
Key historical figures mentioned
n/a
Musical production
n/a
Newspaper coverage of pageant
n/a
Book of words
- None known.
Other primary published materials
- Elsworth School: The School Birthday Pageant 1954-1975. [Np, 1975.]
References in secondary literature
n/a
Archival holdings connected to pageant
- Copy of Programme in Cambridgeshire Local Studies Collection, Cambridge, Reference C.36.6
Sources used in preparation of pageant
n/a
Summary
Historical pageants were popular with institutions such as political parties, churches, youth groups, and the Women’s Institute. They were also popular with schools. From the early days of the movement, pageants had been staged by schools on the occasion of their centenaries, one example being Kingston Grammar School, which had celebrated its six-hundredth anniversary in 1909;1 others being Charterhouse, whose tercentenary fell in 1911 and the Pembury School Centenary Pageant (1973).2 Into the late twentieth century, they continued to be seen as appropriate means of marking such occasions. Elsworth School in Cambridgeshire had by no means an especially long or illustrious history, but in 1975 chose to mark its twenty-first birthday with an historical pageant. Relatively little has been recovered about this event, but it was likely typical of the kind of small-scale pageants put on by schools at this time.
How to cite this entry
Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Elsworth School. The School Birthday Pageant 1954–1975’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1424/