Dore and Totley Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Field beyond Avenue Farm (Dore) (Dore, Yorkshire, West Riding, England)

Year: 1909

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

22 July 1909, at 3.30pm

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master and Author [Pageant Master]: Milner, Mrs
  • Patrons: James Oakes, Chairman of the Derby Education Committee and G.H. Grindrod, HMI

Names of executive committee or equivalent

Executive Committee

  • Hon. Secretary: Mrs. Joseph Cooper
  • Treasurer: Miss Porrett
  • Other members: Miss Crosbie, Miss Taylor, Mrs J. Cooper, Mrs T. Cooper, Mrs Anderson, Mrs Webster, Miss Webster, Mrs Kirfoot, Mrs Gibson, Mrs Strange, Mrs Newton Coombe, Miss Hancock, Mrs and Miss Andrews, Mrs Porrett, Miss Mary Cooper, Mrs Parkes, Mrs Foulstone, Mrs Jackson, Miss Moss, Mrs Armitage, Mr Parsons

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

  • Milner, Mrs

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

250

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

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

Notes

A large audience was reported

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

2s–6d.

Associated events

Morris Dancing, Chorus Singing and the Sheffield Band of the Boys Brigade

Pageant outline

The Union of England under Egbert in 827AD

A traveller enters bearing news of the advance of the conquering Egbert, and a moment later there comes a summons to Cenlac to attend a parliament under Eanred, King of Northumbria, to decide for peace or war. The parliament is held, and though the King is counselled to submit, he tries to rouse the Thanes to resistance. The Archbishop of York, Leofric [?], then uses his influence with him on the side of peace bidding him despise earthly glories so that he may win a heavenly crown, and the King submits. Then Egbert enters with his soldiers and demands of Eanred whether there shall be submission or war. Eanred vows obedience and submission, and lays his crown at Egbert's feet, upon which Egbert promises his protection to the country and Eanred take again his crown.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Ecgberht [Egbert] (d. 839) king of the West Saxons
  • Eanred (fl. c.830–c.854)

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Sheffield Daily Independent
Sheffield Daily Telegraph
Belper News and Derbyshire Telephone

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

n/a

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Photographs, news-cuttings and images of the script at ‘School Pageant, 1909’, Totley History Group, accessed 22 March 2017, http://www.totleyhistorygroup.org.uk/life-in-totley/events/school-pageant/

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

The Totley and Dore pageant was one of a number of school and children’s pageants held before the First World War (see for example Tonbridge). Performed by children from the local village schools, it recreated a mythical peace between King Egbert of Wessex and the Northumbrians. The peace between the Anglo-Saxon monarch and the Northumbrians is wholly fictitious, although the Anglo-Saxon chronicle suggests that Egbert compelled the Northumbrians to submit after defeating them in battle.1 The pageant’s contention that the constituent Kingdoms of England came together peacefully, rather than by domination, was a fundamental part of contemporary thought about the United Kingdom and its empire—which was to be sorely disabused in coming years in India, Ireland, and other parts of the world.

Totley and Dore’s pageant was enthusiastically covered by local newspapers, with the Sheffield Daily Telegraph declaring that ‘Pageantitis has penetrated even to the charming little villages of Dore and Totley’ and the Belper News writing that ‘Remote as it is from the world, the little village of Dore has caught the pageantry fever. It is proud of its historical associations, but it was not only to remind people of these that the performance was held. A higher motive actuated the organisers and that was to make the young folks of Dore patriotic.’2 Frequent comparisons were made to the Pageant of York, held that same year. The Belper News went on to add that ‘A more beautiful setting for the pageant could not be imagined. The scenes were enacted in a natural theatre, under the leafy shelter of flourishing trees, with the noble hills rising in the background.’3 It also noted that ‘A higher motive actuated the organisers and that was to make the young folks of Dore patriotic.’4 Sadly Dore and Totley’s celebration of patriotic virtues and the pacific nature of Anglo-Saxon England would all too-soon be tested by the coming of the Great War. The Totley History group notes that Bernard Turner, who played Wilfred, a pilgrim, was to be the youngest of the ten men from Totley who lost their lives during World War I.5

Nearby Sheffield held a number of large pageants in 1924, 1943, and a pageant of youth in 1944.

Footnotes

1. ^ Heather Edwards, ‘Ecgberht [Egbert] (d. 839), king of the West Saxons’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Entry, accessed 22 March 2017, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8581?docPos=3
2. ^ Sheffield Daily Independent, 23 July 1909, 10; Belper News and Derbyshire Telephone, 30 July 1909, 2.
3. ^ Belper News and Derbyshire Telephone, 30 July 1909, 2.
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ ‘School Pageant, 1909’, Totley History Group, accessed 22 March 2017, http://www.totleyhistorygroup.org.uk/life-in-totley/events/school-pageant/

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Dore and Totley Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1530/