Pageants 16

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  1. The Harrow Historical Pageant
    The Harrow Historical Pageant was one of the first of the inter-war pageants to return to the traditional civic style of the pre-1914 movement (see also the entry for the Reading Historical Pageant...

  2. 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...

  3. 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...

  4. 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 ...

  5. The Pageant of London
    The Pageant of London was the main attraction of the Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace in 1911. Undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious pageant of the Edwardian period, if not the whole twent...

  6. 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 ...

  7. 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...

  8. 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...

  9. Croydon Old Palace Pageant
    Croydon had a history of pageants, including Louis Napoleon Parker’s unsuccessful attempt to stage a Pageant of Croydon in 1923 and The Croydon Parish Church Pageant of 1930, ‘The Church Witness’, ...

  10. The Pageant of Parliament
    The Pageant of Parliament, also advertised as ‘Parliament and the People’, was a major pageant-play that took place in the Royal Albert Hall in 1934. It had an extensive run of 24 performances, a c...

  11. St Paul’s Steps
    How much did spectators actually get out of pageants? Did people in the cheapest seats at the pageant, who most likely did not buy a programme or book of words, particularly those whose grip on his...

  12. Army Pageant
    The Army Pageant, London, was a major and ambitious spectacle, performed 21 times in the summer of 1910. It was a leviathan effort in all respects, but did not seem to make a profit—and was, as suc...

  13. 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...

  14. 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...

  15. Croydon Millenary Pageant
    The Pageant Master of the Croydon Pageant was Christopher Ede, who had distinguished himself at the Pageant of Boston (1951) and Pageant of Guildford (1957). Croydon had previously held a pageant a...

  16. Pageant of London (South of the Thames)
    Staged in the grounds of the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, this pageant was a celebration of the history of London—but specifically that of south London. This perhaps reflected a feeling that the hi...