Ripley in Olden Days, a Historical Pageant Play

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Courtyard of Ripley Castle (Ripley) (Ripley, Yorkshire, North Riding, England)

Year: 1930

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 4

Notes

16 July and 19 July 1930 at 2.30 and 7pm

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master: Lacamp, Louise
  • Music Arranged by: Cecil Moon
  • Producer: Rev. J.A. Hughes; Louise Lacamp

Names of executive committee or equivalent

Executive Committee:

  • Chairman: William Ingilby
  • Secretary and Treasurer: H.C. Curteis
  • Lady Ingilby
  • Mrs Gethin
  • Miss Hudlestone
  • Miss Gooch
  • Rev. Canon Pulleine
  • Mr Fraser

Music Subcommittee:

  • Miss Gooch
  • William Ingilby

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

  • Hudlestone, Frances
  • Gooch, Beatrice

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

200

Financial information

Income:
Tickets: £880. 1s. 0d.
Books etc.: £156. 10s .4d.
Total: £1036. 11s. 4d.

Expenses: c. £925

Profit: £110, of which £55 was donated to Harrogate infirmary.1

Object of any funds raised

Fifty percent of the profits were donated to the Harrogate Infirmary.

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 4906

Notes

692 paid 8s. 6d. (plus 19 complimentary tickets)
950 paid 5s. 9d. (plus 13 complimentary)
2046 paid 2s. 4d.
1186 paid 1s. 3d.

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

8s. 6d.–1s. 3d.

8s. 6d. reserved and numbered (only afternoon performances); 5s. 9d. reserved unnumbered; 2s. 6d.; and 1s. 3d.

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Prologue

A flourish of trumpets awakes the sleeping Spirit of Ripley, who comes forwards crowned with a star and holding a magic mirror before reciting a prologue.

Scene I. Edward III, Visiting Ripley in 1358, Grants a Charter for Holding a Yearly Horse Fair

Catherine de Ingilby, with her daughter Alice and son Henry, come from the castle. They talk of Saint Wilfrid of Ripon and the month of his birth when pilgrims come. Henry reads from Bede’s history but is interrupted by Thomas Ingilby, who has been preparing for the King’s arrival. A crowd of villagers enter, and there is a conversation among them on the town. A pilgrim enters and is led off to hospitality. The King enters from a day’s sport and commends Sir Thomas on the sportsmanship of his sons. The King grants a charter for the prosperity of the town to breed horses and foresees the growth of the wool trade in Leeds and the surrounding area. Jugglers perform tricks; there is singing of ‘Summer Is I-Cumen In’; and the King distributes bounties, is acclaimed and leaves.

Scene II. James I Entertained at Ripley Castle, April 1603

Servants are arranging chairs, tables, etc., and predict a fine day of feasting. Dame Hannah instructs them how to do it properly. They all talk highly of the King. Flower girls and villagers arrive. James I enters and is welcomed by Ingilby. All bow. Archie, the fool, mocks the King for speaking in Latin. All drink to the King, for whom a masque of Solomon, Sampson, Alexander the Great and Diana is then performed. The King greets them all. James thanks all and retires into the castle.

Scene III. 1644

Part I. Before the Battle of Marston Moor

Sir William Ingilby asks his servant about his men and asks further of troop movements. He addresses his soldiers. Lady Ingilby and other women are distressed, but the men do not pay heed. Ingilby’s daughter Jane decides to ride out with the men. They ride out to meet Prince Rupert and thus to fight Cromwell.

Part II. A few Days After the Battle of Marston Moor

Lady Ingilby complains about the lack of news. Two Roundheads—Captain Waller and a soldier—ride in. Ingilby greets Waller as a former friend, for all that he is now her husband’s enemy. He protests he only seeks her good. He warns her of the defeat of Prince Rupert and the fall of York. He also warns her that Cromwell’s army is coming to Ripley and urges her to flee or surrender, but he says Sir William is safe. Lady Ingilby refuses. A ragtag bunch of Royalist fugitives arrive on the scene. Sir William and Robert, the latter badly wounded, ride in to prepare the defence. Cromwell and Waller talk of Ripley’s fate. Cromwell talks with Lady Ingilby who is holding the castle on behalf of her husband for the King. They negotiate that the Parliamentarian soldiers may rest in the village, on condition that Cromwell is a hostage for their good behaviour. Jane Ingilby is brought in, badly wounded, but is spared by Cromwell. There is the sound of a volley of prisoners being executed, and Lady Ingilby bemoans their fate and intercedes to spare the lives of the rest of them.

Scene IV. Ripley Fair in 1660

A fair with various fruit sellers, pedlars and dancing. There is a long discourse between the elderly Sir Solomon and others. Richard Hutton, a Ripley Boy who held Cromwell’s horse, returns after many years. Though he is accused of betraying the Castle’s sympathies, he argues that Sir William Ingilby was originally a Parliamentarian anyway. There is further rejoicing and merrymaking at the end of the protectorate and the return of Charles II.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • John [John of Gaunt], duke of Aquitaine and duke of Lancaster, styled king of Castile and León (1340–1399) prince and steward of England
  • Edward III (1312–1377) king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
  • Black Prince
  • Philippa [Philippa of Hainault] (1310x15?–1369) queen of England, consort of Edward III
  • James VI and I (1566–1625) king of Scotland, England, and Ireland
  • Waller, Sir Hardress (c.1604–1666) parliamentarian army officer and regicide
  • Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland

Musical production

Music performed by Cecil Moon’s Chamber Orchestra.
  • Trad. ‘Summer Is I-Cumen In’. 
  • National Anthem.

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Yorkshire Evening Post
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer
Manchester Guardian

Book of words

n/a

None available

Other primary published materials

  • Hudlestone, Frances and Beatrice Gooch. Ripley in Olden Days, a Historical Pageant Play. Knaresborough, 1930.

7000 copies were printed and sold.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds: Correspondence and financial information. WYL 230/3115–6.
  • Leeds Central Library, Local Studies Section: Copy of programme. Rip 822.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

  • Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Summary

As preparations for the pageant got underway in early 1930, the Yorkshire Evening Post remarked that ‘Few villages in Yorkshire are better known than Ripley. As it is to-day, so it was yesterday, and the only thing to mark the passage of time is the motor traffic that goes honking through’.2 The writer went on to comment: ‘I do hope they include Oliver Cromwell. In my early days I was greatly interested in him, and even now I can tell you where his shirt, with his sword stuck through, hangs in Ripon Minster. No one has ever contradicted this tale, so I insist on believing it.’3 The inclusion of the scene with Cromwell and the aftermath of the Battle of Marston Moor, a pivotal part of the pageant, would probably have been included in any case, but this intervention surely cannot have hurt.

In fact, the representation of the Civil War in the pageant is nuanced, lacking the straightforward monarchism found in many earlier pageants; the Royalist cause supported by Sir William Ingilby is undoubtedly noble, but it is also vainglorious. Furthermore, and crucially, Lady Ingilby’s response to the conflict indicated how many local people were not especially committed to either cause but rather to the safety of their families and the people of the locality. Her willingness to negotiate with Cromwell (something her husband would have rejected) averts the slaughter of the garrison and saves the lives of prisoners. This rejection of idealist political causes is confirmed in the final fair scene (a staple of pageants) which celebrates the restoration by putting behind the political divisions of the previous twenty years. The former parliamentarian Richard Hutton is included in the celebrations, and he notes that William Ingilby had at one time himself been sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause. This relative even-handedness in the presentation of the Civil War was an acknowledgement of the revival of Cromwell’s reputation since the late Victorian period, particularly among the many northern nonconformists.4 The current William Ingilby’s agent, Mr Curteis, played Cromwell in the performance.5

The pageant was amply covered in local newspapers. The Yorkshire Post wrote a number of articles advertising the pageant in laudatory terms, noting from the rehearsal that the pageant promised ‘visitors a fascinating spectacle of English country life against a background perfect for the purpose in its freedom from features of modernity’. It added that it was ‘educative in the most pleasurable sense…The mass scenes are done with a spontaneity and sense of group effects which admirably supports the principal action’.6

Attendance was encouraging: 1700 people came on Wednesday 16 July, even though rain meant that the final four scenes could not be performed, and 2600 more attended on Saturday 19 July.7 This far exceeded the total audience of 1000 that the Executive Committee had predicted for tax purposes.8 Indeed, the numbers were so encouraging that the pageant was staged again on 30 July when two further performances took place.9 Ripley was ideally placed to attract day visitors from the nearby spa town of Harrogate, only three miles to the south. It managed to raise £55 for the Harrogate Infirmary.10

The Yorkshire Post was rhapsodic about the pageant, writing that: ‘All who have seen the pageant are full of praise for a most picturesque and charming spectacle in which imagination and fact are happily blended’.11 The newspaper noted that:

Historic scenes in the life of this typical, clean English village, and of its people of every rank, gain immeasurably in interest and appeal to both eye and heart because they are enacted on the spot where they occurred centuries ago, because many of the actors are descendants of the people concerned in the incidents recorded, and because the whole reconstruction is done with an artistic insight and understanding that gives it genuine vitality. In short, the Ripley pageant is a very pleasant and instructive entertainment.12

Ripley in Olden Days was a resounding success, attracting both locals and tourists. Frances Hudlestone and Beatrice Gooch, the writers, went on to produce the script of the Harrogate Pageant the following year.13 Like his ancestor after Marston Moor, whom he played in the pageant, William Ingilby also fled abroad the year after the pageant, though the Manchester Guardian noted this was an attempt to avoid paying the higher level of income tax.14 Ripley Castle is still in the hands of his descendants today.15

Footnotes

  1. ^ Memo, 6 September 1930, West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds. WYL 230/3115–6.
  2. ^ Yorkshire Evening Post, 13 February 1930, 5.
  3. ^ Ibid.
  4. ^ Blair Worden, ‘The Victorians and Oliver Cromwell’, in History, Religion, and Culture: British Intellectual History 1750–1950, ed. Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore and Brian Young (Cambridge, 2000), 112–135.
  5. ^ Yorkshire Post, 19 March 1930, 13.
  6. ^ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 14 July 1930, 12.
  7. ^ Yorkshire Evening Post, 17 July 1930, 9.
  8. ^ Letter to Customs and Excise, 3 May 1930, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds. 230/3115. The tax authorities ultimately accepted this estimate!
  9. ^ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 21 July 1930, 12.
  10. ^ Copy of Cheque, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds. WYL 230/3116.
  11. ^ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 29 July 1930, 5.
  12. ^ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 29 July 1930, 5.
  13. ^ Manchester Guardian, 11 September 1931, 12.
  14. ^ Manchester Guardian, 2 February 1931, 9.
  15. ^ ‘Ripley Castle’, Yorkshire Guide, accessed 18 April 2016, http://www.yorkshireguides.com/ripley_castle.html.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Ripley in Olden Days, a Historical Pageant Play’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1173/