Pageants 120
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The Leaves of Time
One thousand years of life in Speen, Buckinghamshire, were celebrated in this twelve-scene pageant, staged by villagers as part of Speen Millenium celebrations. Inspired by Mary Kelly's guide, How ... -
Pageant of Sport
Abinger’s previous pageant had been held in 1934 and was famously written by E.M. Forster, a local resident, with music provided and conducted by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who had been born in the lo... -
Lilias Day Pageant: The Story of Kilbarchan
The undoubted success of the historical pageant associated with the Lilias Day celebrations in Kilbarchan in 1933 encouraged a repeat performance in the following year. Revived after a 55-year hiat... -
Pageant of Saint Laurence
Though historically themed, religious pageants often followed strikingly different approaches and dramatic methods to their secular counterparts, from the 1909 English Church Pageant through a rang... -
Woodhall Spa Centenary Pageant of Lincolnshire History
Edwardian pageants meant a great deal to their local communities, providing a means of narrating the history of a place and people through collective effort. The Pageant of Woodhall Spa bore tellin... -
Heritage Pageant
There had been pageants at Chailey put on by the Heritage Craft Schools for lame and crippled children in 1919, 1920, and 1922, though these had all been processional. -
Sydling Pageant
The Sydling Pageant in 1925 commemorated the 1000 year anniversary of King Athelstan’s founding of Milton Abbey when, in thanksgiving for military victory, he presented the Abbey with 30 hides of l... -
Saxlingham Pageant
This is an example of a small-scale village pageant. It was probably performed twice on a single day. Held in 1948, it illustrates the post-war persistence of rural parish-level pageants, which had... -
Meldreth 900th Anniversary Pageant
The Pageant was a revival of the text of one first performed in the 1950s in the village of Meldreth, which lies on the Cambridge to London railway line. The Pageant was common of more modern produ... -
Pembury School Centenary Fete and Pageant
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 move... -
A Pageant of Ditchling
The Pageant was put on by the Ditchling Players, a dramatic group that had been founded in 1923. The Players’ first pageant was staged in 1950, with a further being held during the Festival of Brit... -
East Horsley Pageant
In the interwar period, village pageants were notably popular in Surrey. This is an example of one such pageant. Staged just once, it was like many such pageants closely associated with the local p... -
‘The Legends of Harston’
Village pageants were popular in the interwar period, especially in the south and east of England. This is an East Anglian example. Its content is interesting, since it was concerned not with telli... -
Bishopthorpe Pageant
The Bishopthorpe Pageant was one of a number of pageants held in North Yorkshire over the summer of 1930, including at Pickering and Nun Monckton. The pageant was written by F.L. Perkins, local vic... -
Shute Historical Pageant
This is an example of a pageant put on by a school. Staged at Shute School, Devon, in July 1936, the pageant seems to have been devised as well as performed by the pupils themselves (though one mus... -
A Chapter of the Ancient History of Tonge
Billed as a ‘miniature pageant’ this was a very small-scale affair. It was likely performed just once, on 12 May 1937, and seems to have been connected to the 1937 Coronation Celebrations (Herne Ba... -
Jubilee pageant at Dudwick
This was a village pageant held to mark the Silver Jubilee of king George V. Perhaps appropriately, given this context, the pageant paid considerable attention to royalty, featuring kings Alfred th... -
History of Yarm
Many pageants were held in association with the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; this is one example (see entries for Sandy and Warwickshire). It was staged by the Yarm branch of the Women’s Insti... -
Church History Pageant, Great Bookham
Churches were involved in the pageant movement from the outset. For parish churches like St Nicolas, in Great Bookham, pageants offered a means of celebrating the long continuities of Christian wor... -
Shebbear Pageant
The Shebbear pageant was a small event. It was performed by locals and staged by Ernest Martin, social historian, adult education lecturer and author of The Secret People (1954), a study of the his...