Pageants 17
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The Chipping Sodbury Pageant
The Chipping Sodbury Pageant was a small pageant staged four times in south Gloucestershire in summer 1935. It was produced and mostly written by Cicely Bedford, who had been producing plays since ... -
Light Over England Historical Pageant
The vast majority of pageants included scenes highlighting the importance of the Christian religion to a place or people, and also to the development of the English nation. Yet, for all that religi... -
Silver Jubilee Pageant
There was a revival of historical pageantry in 1977 on the occasion of the queen’s silver jubilee, and David Clarke’s pageant in Guildford was one of the most notable examples. Clarke had worked wi... -
The Pageant of Essex
Following on from the Barking Pageant in 1931, the larger-in-scope Pageant of Essex was staged in summer 1932 to raise money for the newly opened King George Hospital in Ilford. Directed by Frank L... -
Naworth Castle Pageant
The Naworth Castle Pageant was a small event that took place in 1960. It was really more of a fete and short play than a ‘true’ historical pageant. The focus was solely on the Tudor period and Henr... -
The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester
The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester took place in the summer of 1930 and was the top billed event of a fundraiser for the Gloucestershire Royal Infirmary—which was trying to raise £20000 for... -
Warwickshire Coronation Pageant
The Coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 heralded a ‘new Elizabethan Age’, evidenced by the music of Benjamin Britten (whose opera Gloriana was unfortunately a failure), the photography of Cec... -
Ashdown Forest Pageant
It was in September, 1928, that Mrs Olaf Hambro of Kidbrooke Park…broke to me the news that the Village Hall was badly in need of £1,500 for building its new wing, and that she and Miss Needham tho... -
The Three Towns Pageants
The Festival of Britain 1951 was the key cultural event of the period.3 Nationwide, a programme of events was skilfully planned with the aim of embracing modernist influences on British culture whi... -
Oxford Historical Pageant
The Oxford Historical Pageant of 1907 was a major civic event, and took place in the grounds of Magdalen College. Despite being wholly a part of the initial outburst of pageant fever, it was one of... -
St Albans Pageant 1953: A Masque of the Queens
Having staged a pageant during the height of Edwardian ‘pageant fever’ in 1907, as well as one of the early post-war pageants in 1948, St Albans did it for the third time during the Coronation cele... -
The Wolsey Pageant
The Wolsey Pageant was a mid-to-large scale event staged in Ipswich to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the town’s most famous son: Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The pageant was directed and partly-w... -
Benfleet Pageant
This was the first of three pageants held in the small town of Benfleet, Essex, after the Second World War (the others took place in 1953 and 1994). Staged in 1946, the midst of post-war austerity,... -
Time and the City: A Pageant Play
St Albans had staged three historical pageants, in 1907, 1948 and 1953. In 1968 an indoor ‘pageant play’ was staged, with three performances on the stage of the recently built City Hall, which coul... -
Southend and Westcliff-on-Sea Pageant
Preparations for the Southend and Westcliff-on-Sea pageant began with a crowded meeting at King’s Hall on Friday 14 March 1909, where the main features of the show were outlined and explained. The ... -
Chilham Castle Pageant
The pageants that were held immediately after 1945 were suffused with the weight of the war just past. Chilham Castle is a large Tudor-style manor house that lies between Ashford and Canterbury in ... -
The Pageant of England
If one were in search of England in the 1930s, as so many contemporaries from H.V. Morton to J.B. Priestley to George Orwell seemed to be, one could do worse than head to Slough. The army had set u...