Edmund of Anglia

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Abbey Gardens (Bury St Edmunds) (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England)

Year: 1970

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 19

Notes

6–25 July 1970

2.5 hours long.

Monday to Saturday, and one Saturday matinee on the final day.

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Producer [Pageant Master]: Wood, Olga Ironside
  • Set Designer: Donald Tapster
  • Set and Site Adviser: Martin Whitworth
  • Technical Director: John E. Eley
  • Stage Director: Roger Knight
  • Stage Manager: Reginald Adams
  • Assistant Stage Managers: Denis Squires, Dale Stonehouse, Jean Knight, Stanley Spain, Peter Stonebridge, David Snow, Pat Clarke
  • Sound Installation: Theatre Projects Sound Limited
  • Sound Consultant: Antony Horder
  • Sound Technician: Robert Bush
  • Lighting Installation: Theatre Projects Lighting Limited
  • Lighting Technician: Richard Smerdon
  • Lighting Assistants: Ivan Goodchild, Peter Holroyd, Reginald Webb, Terry Styles
  • Costume Design: Frances Woodward
  • Wardrobe Mistress: Frances Woodward
  • Assistant Wardrobe Mistress: Katherine Drummond
  • Musical Advisers: Harrison Oxley, Keith Shaw, Norman Shield
  • Front of House Manager: W. Blanthorn
  • Assistant Managers: Mesdames Hodgkins and Webb
  • Backstage Assistants: Pamela Purland, Jennifer Black, Carrol Clarke, Jill Rayner
  • Programme Stewards: Bessie Symonds with Mesdames Abbot, Coe, Cracknell, D’eath, Ely, Groom, Gatland, Hall, Hazelton, Hitchcock, Land, Morley, Orbell, Payne, Pearson-Robb, G. Smith, M. Smith

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)

  • Wood, Olga Ironside

Names of composers

  • Oxley, Harrison
  • Shield, Norman
  • Powell, Elizabeth
  • Brown, Bryan
  • Woodward, Frances

Numbers of performers

312

‘When doubled, which many parts have had to be for this three-week production, the Edmund cast numbers 312.’ An Irish wolfhound and an Alsatian also formed part of the cast.

Financial information

The total cost of producing the pageant was £12000, with the set and stands accounting for a third of this. The only paid workers were the technical administration and sound and light technicians. Everyone else from the authoress and producer down to the most junior member gave their services for free.2

It seems that the pageant made a very slight loss, the shortfall being met by local ratepayers through the levying of a ¼d. rate.3

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

1100th anniversary of the martyrdom of King Edmund.

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Yes
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 14050

Notes

Of the total 14820 seats available to see the play, 14050 were occupied. The only vacant seats were in the first few days.4

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

35s.–10s.

35s., 25s., 10s. and possibly others.

Associated events

The St Edmund Year opened with dedicatory services in Anglican, Catholic and Nonconformist churches.

Musical Programme:
  • July 5: Bach recital in the Cathedral by British cellist Jacqueline du Pre. 
  • Three days of musical events from 3–5 July. 
  • July 3: Recital of American music by the University of California choir in the Cathedral.
  • 4 July: Wandsworth School Choir recital of English church music in the Cathedral.
  • July 11: East Anglian Student Orchestra concert in Lavenham Church.
  • July 19: Moscow Chamber Orchestra in the Cathedral.
  • July 19: United States Air Force Band in Europe concert in the Abbey Gardens.
  • September 26: Bleanavon Male Voice Choir at the West Suffolk College of Further Education.
  • October: Concerts by the St Edmundsbury Bach Choir and Orchestra, East Anglian Student Orchestra, St Johns College Choir, Cambridge, and a recital of organ music.
  • A large commemoration carnival made its way through the town centre one evening, with 100 entries (including 52 decorated floats), watched by 12000 people. Also in the carnival was a West Indian steel band playing a specially composed calypso about St Edmund and monks brewing ale. 
  • November 20: Closing Edmund service.

Pageant outline

Scene I. The Palace of Offa, King of the North Folk and South Folk of East Anglia, c. 850 AD

The ageing King Offa of Anglia, picks his cousin’s son, Edmund, as heir to the throne. [It is unclear who ‘King Offa’ is supposed to be; numismatic evidence suggests that Edmund succeeded King Æthelweard]7

Scene II. The Court of King Offa’s Cousin, King Alkmund, at Northemberges, in Saxony, a few years later

[In some accounts, Edmund is presented as being the son of the Saxon king Alkmund; hence this scene].

Scene III. The Palace of Offa at Thetford, sometime later

King Offa, on his death bed, shakily places the crown on Edmund’s head, falls back and dies.

Scene IV. The Meadows of Beodricsworth

Presumably when Edmund comes to the area of Bury after being crowned to meet the people.

Scene V. The Palace of King Edmund

The peace-loving Edmund has a quiet time until King Lothparck of the Danes is washed ashore in an open boat. Lothparck is rescued, only to be killed in a fit of jealousy by Edmund’s favourite huntsman, Berne. Berne is sentenced to be put to sea.

Scene VI. The Byzantine Court of Hubba and Inguar, on their Return from a Two-Year Raid down the River Po to the Adriatic and Byzantium

Included raucous entertainment, such as wrestling. Berne is rescued, turns traitor and joins the Danes.

Interval

Scene VII. The Capture

The Viking long ship sails majestically down the River Lark and attacks Edmund and his men, before he is captured.

Scene VIII. The Night Before [the Martyrdom]

Scene IX. The Martyrdom

Edmund is captured and refused to renounce his Christian faith is finally tied to a nearby tree and martyred by bowmen.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Swithun [St Swithun] (d. 863) bishop of Winchester [also known as Swithin]
  • Edmund [St Edmund] (d. 869) king of the East Angles
  • Ívarr [Ívarr inn Beinlausi, Ingwaer, Imhar] (d. 873) viking leader
  • Henry I (1068/9–1135) king of England and lord of Normandy
  • Langton, Stephen (c.1150–1228) archbishop of Canterbury
  • Winthrop, John (1588–1649) colonial governor
  • Paine, Thomas (1737–1809) author and revolutionary
  • Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) president of the United States of America
  • Kennedy, John F. (1917-1963) president of the United States of America
  • King, Martin Luther Jr. (1929-1968) American Baptist Minister and Civil Rights leader
  • Palach, Jan (1948-1969) Czech student protester

Musical production

Recorded. Harps, flutes, clarinets, strings. Pieces included:
  • Danish Victory Song. Composed by Harrison Oxley, words by Derek Ironside Wood.
  • Edmund Theme. Composed by Harrison Oxeley.
  • Saxon Court Music. Composed by Norman Shield.
  • Slave Dance Music. Composed by Elizabeth Powell and Bryan Brown.
  • The Sun Ballet. Choreographed and trained by Frances Woodward.

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Bury Free Press
East Anglia Times

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

  • Wood, Olga Ironside. Edmund of Anglia. Bury St Edmunds, 1970. Souvenir programme.
  • Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement]. 3 July 1970.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Bartie, Angela, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme and Paul Readman. 'Performing the Past: Identity, Civic Culture and Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century Small Towns'. In Small Towns in Europe and Beyond: 20th-21st Century, edited by Luda Klusakova. Prague, forthcoming.

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Film of the pageant is held by the East Anglia Film Archive. Cat. No. 722. Accessed 10 September 2015, http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/722.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

  • ‘MSS Life of St Edmund by Abboy of Fleury in Jesus College, Oxford called Liber Feretrariorum St Edmundi (The Book of the Keepers of St Edmund’s Shrine).
  • Another MSS of this Life, as old as the 11th century, is preserved in the Cottonian Collection together with an account of the miracles by the Saint by Herman the Archdeacon, written about 1070 AD.
  • An imperfect copy of another life, preserved in the same collection, in French prose by Caseneuve, called Vie de S. Edmund, marked Domit IX.1.
  • The Harleian copy, in the British Museum, of a poetical and beautifully written life of the Saint, composed by command of William Curteys, Abbot of St Edmundsbury, by John Lydgate, compiled in consequence of the long visit King Henry VI paid to this monastery in 1433 and presented to him by John Lydgate.
  • The circumstances of St Edmund’s life previous to his crowning of East Anglia are recorded by Galfridus de Fontibus in his ‘De Puerita Sancti Edmundi’ supposed to have been written about 1150AD, an MS of which is preserved in the public library at Cambridge.
  • Records of St Edmund of East Anglia, King and Martyr, by J.R. Thomspon, 1890.
  • A Perambulation of Kent, conteining the Description, Mystorie and Customes of that Shyre, written in 1570 by William Lombarde of Lincolnes Inne—Gent. And imprinted at London by Edmund Bottifant 1596.’8

Summary

Edmund of Anglia was a pageant-play, staged 19 times in the summer of 1970 in the Abbey Gardens of Bury St Edmunds. It was the main summer attraction of the Year of Edmund, a series of events, including choral music, orchestral music, a carnival, and church services, that commemorated the 1100th anniversary of his martyrdom. While not strictly a historical pageant, based as it was on a series of events in the short life of one figure, it drew upon the strong pageantry tradition in the town and shared, in organisational terms, much with the first two pageants. Unlike those events, however, it faced a surprising amount of vocal public criticism and even an organized protest, as social and economic changes that were emerging at the time of the 1959 pageant reached maturity. Nonetheless, it played to an almost full capacity and, even though it made a small loss, was deemed by most to have been a success in the mould of the town’s other pageants.

The commemoration was first suggested by Councillor Harry Marsh, and primarily organised by the Borough Council, in cooperation with associations, clubs and other bodies working together as a committee.9 The pageant was thus launched with a promise of £6000 of funding from the Council, as well as £4000 from a variety of local businesses and branches of national businesses (such as Adnams, Barclays, Lloyds, and Sainsbury’s).10 It was written and directed by Olga Ironside Wood, who had designed some of the costumes for the 1959 pageant and was currently employed as the County Drama Adviser for West Suffolk. She also wrote plays and had previously produced a Civil War pageant at Stoke Poges.11 She declared in the programme: ‘The story almost wrote itself. It has everything—all the stuff of drama—war, peace, violence, suspense, betrayal, tragedy, idealism, strong human interest and glitter and spectacle.’12 She also hinted that there was more to the tale than just the life of Edmund, as she tried to relate ‘this wonderful story of one man’s fight for his beliefs against overwhelming odds’ to ‘life today’. While it is not ultimately clear what form this took, the inclusion in the cast list of King Henry I, Stephen Langton, Governor Winthrop, Tom Paine, Abraham Lincoln, Negro Slaves, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Jan Palach would suggest that there was some sort of historical procession linking the story of Edmund to consequent struggles for freedom and other unfortunate martyrs. As for the story of Edmund as presented in the pageant narrative, for all that a range of historical sources seem to have been consulted by Wood, she took some liberties with the (admittedly very scanty) records of this phase of English history. In particular, the pageant’s figure of King Offa seems to have been largely an invention. King Offa of Mercia had dominion over East Anglia, but died at least fifty years before Edmund’s short reign; indeed, numismatic evidence suggests that Edmund’s immediate predecessor was King Æthelweard.13 It may be, perhaps, that Wood intended to suggest a connection between Edmund and the great Mercian king, so amplifying the monarchical status of the former figure, but the straightforward portrayal of Offa identifying Edmund as his heir (and indeed crowning him) suggests otherwise.

It was much smaller in terms of performers, with a cast of 312 (many of which were doubled parts).14 Yet, as with the 1907 and 1959 pageants, a great deal of the work was done voluntarily. Local schoolboys made the shields, weapons, and many of the other properties, and, for almost a year, a team of ladies met weekly to cut out and sew hundreds of costumes.15 Indeed, the only people who were paid for their part in the production were the technical administrators and sound and light technicians.16 The memory of the previous pageants was also important, with photos and stories about their staging in the special Festival of St Edmund supplement produced by the Bury Free Press.17 In the pageant programme too, there were photos from the 1959 event.18 Harrison Oxley, who wrote and conducted the music for the 1959 event, again took that role in 1970. There was even one performer, Harvey Frost as the Royal Physician, who had performed in the 1907 pageant!19 As with the previous pageants, the actors, such as Paul Deane as Edmund, were amateur.

There was a particular attempt to market the Edmund Year to the younger people of the town and country. Under the heading of ‘youth, liberty, participation’, in a programme distributed to organisations throughout, the Celebrations Co-ordinator, Councillor John Knight, pointed towards the martyrdom of the ‘young King’ and declared: ‘In 1970 let us reflect on the fast expanding knowledge, experience and comprehension of our fine generation of youth—and the power and responsibility that go with it. Where better to call for vigilance for liberty in Britain and the world beyond than Bury St Edmunds, whose links with Edmund and Magna Carta shine in the motto “Shrine of the King, Cradle of the Law”’?’20 He later backed up this ideal, telling the Bury Free Press that ‘A feeling for history and tradition, for freedom, for people—particularly youth—and for the arts and other leisure time activities’ led him to accept his duty to commemorate the King’s martyrdom.21 As had been common for pageants throughout the century, the Mayor also stressed the connections between portraying the past and preparing for the future, declaring in the pageant programme: ‘Our pride in our past stimulates those of the present to foster the pride of today and to work and plan for our future, so that Bury St Edmunds will continue to be a centre in which it is a pleasure to work and live. The Borough Council is deeply conscious of this when planning for the future, so that the “Old and New” will blend in perfect harmony.’22

From the beginning there was a certain amount of opposition (reacted to with counter-opposition) to the Edmund Year, and the pageant in particular, expressed frequently in the pages of the Bury Free Press. The celebrations were criticised by one local Catholic resident as a cynical ploy to ‘boost the trade and tourist value of the town… allowing commercialism to obliterate the Christian values by which St Edmund lived and for which he died.’23 Yet, in the same issue, another man responded:

Is it not about time the chairborne critics of the Edmund celebrations devoted more of their misplaced energy to thinking up feasible alternatives to the Festival rather than criticising with monotonous regularity, the honest efforts of others through your correspondence columns?... Those whose favourite pastime seems to be sitting on an over-ample posterior writing anonymous criticism to local newspapers tend to remain traditionally critical of local events regardless of their subject or content, but we have yet to hear one practical suggestions as to how they would deal with the problem of pleasing all the people all the time.24

Harry Marsh, chairman of the Bury Town Council Publicity Committee and originator of the celebrations, also replied to the distressed Catholic, arguing that ‘claiming that commemoration is being used for commercialism appears to be from one who has not attended the solemnising events or has been unable to enter into the spirit and meaning of the Festival.’ As he pointed out, there had also been many associated services in Anglican, Catholic and Noncomformist churches—actions that were ‘utterly sincere’ in their ‘dedication and thankfulness’.25

Others criticised the celebrations for being irrelevant. Another local man expressed his sadness that the council seemed so interested in trying to promote Edmund as the patron saint, feeling this to be an ‘insignificant issue’. There was, he argued, ‘a very real danger that present problems will become obscured’ if ‘too much attention is placed on past events and obsessions’. One such problem was the Jacqueline Close affair—‘a disgrace to the reputation and social conscience of the town’, the solving of which ‘should come before the preservation of prestige concepts and projects.’26 He was referring to an on-going dispute that the residents of Jacqueline Close were having with the town council. In 1967 it became clear that the remnants of old mine workings underneath the houses there were beginning to suffer from subsidence. After a major collapse in 1968, when a large amount of one house was swallowed in a hole, Jacqueline Close was declared unsafe by the local council, who suggested that the residents should leave. Those who stayed behind organised themselves and sought compensation or repair, which the council deemed too expensive.27 During the immensely popular carnival procession, when around 12000 people lined the streets of the town to watch the 100 entries (52 of which were decorated floats), the press could still not help but notice a plain undecorated Land Rover with the protest slogan ‘Bury Jacqueline Close?’ on the side.28

Others believed that pageantry and history were not conducive ways to forwarding the economic progress of the town. One letter, signed mysteriously as ‘Newcomer’, argued that:

The sooner Bury councillors free themselves from their pitiful pre-occupation with the dim and distant past and devote the time to dealing actively with the problems and needs of a living community the better it will be for the town. To become an efficiently and economically-run town keeping abreast of modern standards will do far more for the name of Bury St Edmunds than arranging carnivals, plays, processions, and bun fights in an attempt to revive the past. To those people who seem obsessed with Bury’s glorious (?) past, may I suggest the necessity of trying to ensure that Bury has a future a little more glorious than is indicated at the moment.29

In stark comparison to the 1907 and 1959 pageants there was even open dissent in the town council. As Councillor Harry Marsh told the Bury Free Press: ‘my proposal to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of the martyrdom of St Edmund was recommended by the publicity committees to the council where some claimed that “The past was over and over with!”’30 Alderman J.M. Painter, for example, stated in one meeting: ‘The council has something better to do, having many more problems than to become concerned over a dead king’, an opinion supported by two other councillors present.31

The criticism of the St Edmund Year reached its most vitriolic after the pageant actually began its run. Particularly emphatic was a letter to the Bury Free Press from ‘Achilles Heel’:

This town has never ceased to surprise me with the capacity to exhibit every sign of fossilization, and yet continue to exist. In your edition of July 3 the usual wealth of local news gems were augmented by an orgasm of worship praising the St Edmunds Pageant farce. In your supplement you ask the question, ‘Who was St Edmund?’ to which a not inconsiderable proportion of those freedom loving young people of Bury will reply ‘who cares?’ With the exception of a group of the frightfully frightfully ‘county set’, the town’s businessmen and some egocentric senile delinquents, a large proportion of Bury’s population do not know and do not care about St Edmund, or the pathetically embarrassing series of events intended to colour his 1100th anniversary… The people on the estates around the old heart of the town are not involved in many of the so-called commemorative events, and see the whole affair as a waste of ratepayers money on what is proving to be an advertisement for the businesses of the town… Rather than despair of any change occurring that might alter Bury and cause a radical shift in its conservative outlook, I continue to live in hope that this year’s Pageant will serve to convince Burians of the monumental waste of their money.32

Predictably, the Achilles Heel letter rubbed many up the wrong way. One local man wrote to the Bury Free Press and declared it ‘despicable’, arguing that ‘Doubtless certain local bovver boys care little for Edmund, so in their ignorance they fail to appreciate our tolerance of them—brought about by a feeling of compassion towards all mankind in general, and drop-outs in particular’, traits he thought had been ‘handed down’ from Edmund.33 Achilles Heel, revealed to researcher Tom Hulme as Jordan Putkowski (then a local 23-year-old), then went even further, organising an alternative satirical pageant of his own along with several similarly minded friends. Named ‘Was St Edmund a Toadstool?’ it took the form of a puppet show in the Abbey Gardens, and was seen by a ‘fair-sized crowd of interested and amused onlookers’. When a park attendant tried to intervene one of the crowd shouted ‘Shut up, we’re enjoying this.’34 It also attracted the attention of the police who, to their credit, let the twenty-minute performance finish before informing the puppeteers that they actually needed a license to perform in the gardens.35 The Bury Free Press responded in a surprisingly tolerant manner, writing ‘one has to admire their spirit and impish sense of humour, to say nothing of the orderly way they conducted themselves at all times, despite being somewhat thwarted in ambition… when reaction is confined to good-humoured “taking the mickey” in order to make a viewpoint heard, it’s a thin skin that cannot appreciate the joke of it all.’36

Putkowski’s protest and backstory neatly encapsulates the ways in which Bury had changed in the previous twenty years. Son of a Polish furniture-restorer, he had grown up on the new Mildenhall housing estate; in 2014 he explained how:

There was an alternative Bury St Edmunds, populated by young late-teens and early twenty-year olds during the mid to late 1960's for whom the pageant was a costly irrelevance. They weren't really party political but took umbrage at the large amount of money that was being squandered on the pageant. My principal complaint was that it was a business promotion and had damned all to do with the majority of the townsfolk and as I think I indelicately expressed it fuck all to do with folk living on Mildenhall and Howard estates. Then, and I surmise to some extent nowadays, the overwhelmingly working class estate dwellers were marginalised.37

Since the end of the War, the town had seen ‘a period of expansion which can only be paralleled by the twenty years before the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the compilation of Domesday Book in 1086.’38 By 1960 the building up of the Mildenhall Estate was well under way, joining the Howard estate and the Nowton Road housing. Industrial estates were also built, as Bury St Edmunds actively courted London firms to come and set up under a town expansion scheme. Agriculture, while still important, was joined in the local economy with new businesses of many kinds—from Nilfisk, the Danish vacuum cleaner manufacturer, to Vitality Bulbs and Vintents, a firm which made specialised cameras.39 Accordingly, the population of the town had climbed sharply; after staying around 16000 from 1881 to 1931, it reached 20056 in 1951 and 25661 in 1971.40 Inevitably, these economic and social changes, and the ‘blurred suburbanised vision’ they represented, were not welcomed wholeheartedly; the famous historian of Suffolk, Norman Sharpe, lamented that ‘the extraordinary decision to double the town, from 20000 to 40000 is relentlessly changing both its heart and country setting.’41 While there was an inkling of these changes in 1959, by 1970 they were truly evident.

Yet, if the town demography had changed rapidly, the civic elite had not necessarily kept in step. As Putkowski further explained:

It is perhaps difficult in C21st to appreciate the extent to which Bury St Edmunds during the 1960's was Torytown, very much influenced by the farmers and landowning squirearchy but controlled directly by an oligarchy of powerful individuals associated with the the Con(servative) Club and local Freemasons—specifically the Magna Carta Lodge. If you check the Mayors of Bury St Edmunds during the 1960's and possibly earlier, I have a hunch that they were all on the square—with possibly one exception (a local Co-op manager). It wasn't an occultish, malevolent mafia but more a small town confluence of interested parties.42

To the newer residents of the town, the pageantry format seemed strangely quaint and obsolete.

Still, if there had been an intriguing protest, the press was also mostly complimentary of the pageant, declaring it an ‘absorbing spectacle’ that was both ‘colourful and entertaining’.43 The organiser, John Knight, also told the press that there had been a ‘wonderful spirit of co-operation and enthusiasm which has manifested itself in so many ways in diverse places.’44 In attendance terms the pageant was not seen by anywhere near as many people as in 1907 or 1959, but, by its own measure, it was a success; of the total 14820 seats available to see the play, 14050 were occupied, and the only vacant seats were in the first few days.45 While it made a small loss, necessitating the imposition of an additional ¼d. rate in the borough, the Edmund Year Co-ordinator John Knight commented that it was still ‘exceptional value’, the benefits of which would be ‘felt for some years to come’.46 Edmund of Anglia was the last major pageant in Bury St Edmunds. Though a minor success, the opposition it faced shows that perhaps the applicability of the pageantry format to the small town was on the wane, if not over altogether.

Footnotes

  1. ^ ‘Pageant Play Writer is its Producer’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 6.
  2. ^ ‘Edmund Cost (¼d Rate) Value for Money’, Bury Free Press, 14 August 1970, 1.
  3. ^ ‘Edmund Cost (¼d Rate) Value for Money’, Bury Free Press, 14 August 1970, 1.
  4. ^ Edmund Cost (¼d Rate) Value for Money’, Bury Free Press, 14 August 1970, 1.
  5. ^ ‘Many Musical Events in Big Edmund Year Programme’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 4.
  6. ^ ’12,000 See Bury’s Big Parade’, Bury Free Press, 10 July 1970, 3.
  7. ^ Antonia Gransden, ‘Edmund [St Edmund] (d. 869)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
  8. ^ Olga Ironside Wood, Edmund of Anglia (Bury St Edmunds, 1970), 21.
  9. ^ J.W.H. Knight, ‘The Edmund Year Festival’ in Wood, Edmund of Anglia, 11.
  10. ^ ‘Financing the Commemorative Festival’ in Wood, Edmund of Anglia, 15.
  11. ^ ‘Pageant Play Writer is its Producer’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 6.
  12. ^ Wood, ‘The King and Martyr we are Commemorating’ in Edmund of Anglia, 11.
  13. ^ Antonia Gransden, ‘Edmund [St Edmund] (d. 869)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
  14. ^ ‘Pageant Play Writer is its Producer’, 6.
  15. ^ ‘A Truly County Event’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 7.
  16. ^ ‘Edmund Cost (¼d Rate) Value for Money’, Bury Free Press, 14 August 1970, 1.
  17. ^ ‘Edmund as Seen in 1907 Pageant’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 5; ‘Edmund 1959 has been a Long Way’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 5.
  18. ^ In Wood, Edmund of Anglia, 18.
  19. ^ ‘“Edmund of Anglia”—“an Absorbing Spectacle”’, Bury Free Press, 10 July 1970, 24.
  20. ^ ‘Exciting “Edmund Year” is Ahead’, Bury Free Press, 2 January 1970, 12.
  21. ^ ‘Co-ordinator Thanks Helpers’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 3.
  22. ^ Mayor Stephen Davies, ‘Sacrarium Regis Cunabula Legis’ in Wood, Edmund of Anglia, 3.
  23. ^ ‘This has Distressed a Catholic’, Bury Free Press, 24 July 1970, 12.
  24. ^ ‘Congratulate the Borough on This’, Bury Free Press, 24 July 1970, 12.
  25. ^ ‘What the Festival is all about’, Bury Free Press, 24 July 1970, 12.
  26. ^ ‘Present Problems may be Obscured by Over Emphasis on the Past’, Bury Free Press, 3rd July 1970, 10.
  27. ^ Dieter D. Genske, Urban Land: Degradation, Investigation, Remediation (Berlin, 2003), 65. See Derek Pole, A Blight at the End of the Tunnel (2007), for a resident’s perspective of the subsidence affair.
  28. ^ ’12,000 see Bury’s Big Parade’, Bury Free Press, 10 July 1970, 3.
  29. ^ ‘The Future is more Important’, Bury Free Press, 3 July 1970, 10.
  30. ^ ‘Why it was Decided to Commemorate’, Festival of St Edmund [Bury Free Press supplement], 3 July 1970, 2.
  31. ^ ‘The Future is more Important’, 10.
  32. ^ ‘Anyway, Who Cares about Edmund? Not Young Set’, Bury Free Press, 10 July 1970, 12.
  33. ^ ‘So Belt up Mr Achilles Heel’, Bury Free Press, 24 July 1970, 12.
  34. ^ ‘Panda Car Men Move Satirists Protesting over Pageant Cash’, East Anglian Daily Times, 27 July 1970, 8.
  35. ^ ‘Pageant Play—it was “Curtains” for Uninvited, Unexpected Satirists’, Bury Free Press, 31 July 1970, 13.
  36. ^ ‘Oi! You Can’t do That There Here!’ Bury Free Press, 24 July 1970, 12.
  37. ^ Email from Julian Putkowski to Tom Hulme, 7.43pm, 19 June 2014.
  38. ^ Margaret Statham, The Book of Bury St Edmunds (Buckingham, 1988), 127.
  39. ^ Margaret Statham, The Book of Bury St Edmunds (Buckingham, 1988), 127.
  40. ^ Ibid., 140.
  41. ^ Carol Twinch, Bury St Edmunds: A History and Celebration (Salisbury, 2004), 82.
  42. ^ Email from Julian Putkowski to Tom Hulme, 9.15pm, 19 June 2014.
  43. ^ ‘“Edmund of Anglia”—“an Absorbing Spectacle”’, 24.
  44. ^ ‘Co-ordinator Thanks Helpers’, 3.
  45. ^ ‘Edmund Cost (¼d Rate) Value for Money’, 1.
  46. ^ Ibid., 1.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Edmund of Anglia’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1058/