Pageants 263
A map will be displayed here shortly.
-
The Arbroath Abbey Pageant, 1966
For the twelfth in the series of Arbroath Abbey pageants, the intention seems to have been to put on a performance using all of those elements that had worked so well in the past. There was no chan... -
The Axbridge Pageant
The Axbridge Pageant of 1967 was a small local event, staged to celebrate the opening of the A371 Axbridge Bypass. Despite a fairly general lack of historical pageantry in the 1960s, it inspired a ... -
Axbridge Pageant 2010
The Axbridge Pageant of 2010 was the sixth outing for the event first staged in 1967 to commemorate the opening of the A371 Axbridge bypass. As had been the case for some time, the Axbridge Pageant... -
The Cambridge Pageant
This small one-day play was Arthur Bryant’s first foray into pageantry. At the time he was 25 years of age, and had recently taken up the position of headmaster at the Cambridge School of Arts, Cra... -
The Conway Pageant: Tableaux Vivant
The Tableaux Vivant was part of the more general Conway celebrations in 1927. For an analysis of both, see entry for Conway Pageant: Pageant Plays -
The Pageant of Buxton in Light and Sound
The Pageant of Buxton in Light and Sound took place over a month-and-a-half period in the spring of 1958. It was directed by Christopher Ede, the most famous (and active) of the post-war pageant ma... -
1514-1914 Historical Pageant. Hawick Quater Centenary
The inhabitants of Scottish Border towns have long been assiduous in promoting their own regional identity through cultural demonstrations of their distinctive past known as ‘Common Ridings’ [see A... -
Beneath Hadrian's Tower: A Historical Pageant
This pageant was one of a great many held across the UK to mark the occasion of the queen's coronation in 1953. Owing to saturation coverage of the coronation and the royal family, as well as the a... -
The Isle of Wight Pageant
Historical pageants were always demonstrations of civic defiance or loyalty towards authority, emphasizing the importance of a place in wider national history, of which the 1907 Historical Pageant ... -
The Pageant of Maybole
Initial planning for this pageant indicates that a theatrical spectacle was forecast: a newspaper report issued a few months before it took place quoted the author and producer of the pageant as st... -
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... -
Wallingford Charter Celebrations Pageant
Wallingford lies roughly equidistant on the road between Reading and Oxford, just on the western edge of the Chiltern Hills. Though in 1951 its population was only 3514, it was able to celebrate a ... -
Perth Historical Pageant
On the surface of things, all augured well for the success of the 1949 Perth Pageant; in the event, however, it was not that well attended and lost money. Given that it was a fundraising event, thi... -
Oxford Pageant of Victory
From the book of words and its references to several hundred participants in some scenes, this appears to have been a very large pageant, and was one of a number held in the aftermath of the First ... -
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... -
St Catherine’s School Centenary Pageant: A Vivid Tapestry of 2000 Years of Women in History
St Catherine’s is a fee-paying school in Surrey with approximately 880 pupils, of which 170 board.1 The pageant was organised by David Clarke, who was a prominent pageant master in Surrey (see Shal... -
Reigate Priory Panorama
Like the Reigate pageant of 1953 and the ‘Surrey Cavalcade’ Pageant in 1956, the ‘panorama’ of 1959 was produced by Cecile Hummel, headmistress of Merstham Grange School. There is a copy of the pro... -
Northwich Pageant: the Queen's Heritage
The detail of this pageant, which took place in the Cheshire town of Northwich during the period of austerity following World War II, remains stubbornly opaque. It is almost certain that it was mai... -
Battle Abbey Pageant
Pageants were often promoted as a means of boosting the status of the place in which they were held, acting as an advertisement of a town, city, or a region. Unfortunately, pageants were often resp... -
Exeter Fete and the Pageant of ‘A Pitiful Queene’
‘A Pitiful Queene’ was probably Mary Kelly’s largest pageant, and certainly her only one held in a city or a large town. Mary Kelly (1888–1951) founded the Village Dramatic Society in 1919 in her n...