Pageants 21

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  1. Bilston Historical Pageant
    Bilston is a town in the heart of the Black Country whose industries were historically focused on coalmining, stone quarrying, iron and steel production, buckle and lock making, and manufacturing i...

  2. Bath Historical Pageant
    Edwardian Pageants can accurately be said to have followed a domino-effect where a pageant, either in the locality or in a town of similar size, provoked the inception of another—for the sake of ke...

  3. Bramshill Park Historical Pageant
    This pageant was held in the grounds of Bramshill House in Hampshire, and is an example of the many small pageants held in and around great country estates in the interwar period. Perhaps appropria...

  4. The Greenwich Night Pageant
    Taking place against the backdrop of economic depression, the Greenwich Night Pageant partly aimed to stimulate the new ‘important industries’ that had sprung up along the Thames, and, during the r...

  5. Sir Walter Scott Centenary
    There were so many events taking place in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the death of Sir Walter Scott that it is not surprising that most passed without much fanfare. However, this part...

  6. The Pageant of Plymouth Hoe
    The Pageant of Plymouth Hoe was a locally major event staged to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. It was the first large pageant in the city since the Mayflower Pageant in 1920, and followe...

  7. Wimbledon Park Pageant and Fair
    Pageants in the suburbs of London were popular during the 1920s and 1930s. If interwar London was to be defined by its suburbs, made famous as John Betjeman’s ‘Metroland’, pageants themselves were ...

  8. Ilford Children’s Pageant
    Children’s pageants proved popular fixtures during the twentieth century, for instance in Stepney (1909), Kirkcaldy (1911), Windsor (1911), Berkhamsted (1922), and Leeds (1926). Many smaller-scale ...

  9. Pilgrims to the Sunrise
    Religious pageants, both by Anglican and nonconformist churches, reached their heyday in the interwar period. Paradoxically, this accompanied a major stagnation in overall religious observance and ...

  10. The Chelsea Historical Pageant
    Performed in 1908, the Chelsea Pageant was part of the initial wave of ‘pageantitis’, and notably the first pageant to be staged within the capital. ‘Little Chelsea’, declared The Times, was ‘going...

  11. The Kenilworth Castle Pageant
    The Kenilworth Castle Pageant was another landmark pageantry event in Warwickshire, following the Warwick pageants of 1906 and 1930. Despite being billed as a ‘Kenilworth’ pageant, it depended on v...

  12. Old Moreton 1589-1914
    In the early years of the twentieth century, Elizabethan revels held as added attractions during Merrie England-type fetes were ten a penny. However, that held in 1914 in the village of Odd Rode, C...

  13. Lady Godiva Procession and Pageant
    Pageantry was an ancient tradition in Coventry, dating back to medieval times. The comparatively recent Godiva Procession, to commemorate Lady Godiva’s famous ride through the town during the eleve...

  14. The Sherborne Pageant
    The Sherborne Pageant of 1905 truly was ‘the mother of all pageants’, its style, organization and themes consequently and consistently replicated when ‘pageant fever’ swept the nation. It was the b...

  15. The Walthamstow Pageant 1930
    The Walthamstow Pageant of 1930 was staged to commemorate the granting of a Charter of Borough Incorporation the previous year. It took place indoors at the plush Palace Theatre, an impressive buil...

  16. The Pageant of Empire
    The Pageant of Empire took place over the course of a wet six weeks in July and August 1924 in the huge newly-constructed concrete Wembley Stadium. It was just one attraction of the monumental Brit...

  17. The Ebford Pageant
    The Ebford Pageant was one of many held in association with the coronation of queen Elizabeth II (see, for instance pageants at Sandy and Warwick). In the pageant narrative, some liberties seem to ...

  18. 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...

  19. Winchester National Pageant
    The 1908 Winchester Pageant was, like those held in Sherborne (1905), Romsey (1907), and Oxford (1907), one of the crowning achievements of Edwardian historical pageantry, genuinely living up to it...

  20. Hastings Dickens Centenary Pageant
    Charles Dickens had little connection with the town of Hastings, visiting the town in November 1861 to give readings from A Christmas Carol and the Pickwick Papers at the Music Hall.3 Dickens and h...