Sutton-in-the-Isle Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Sutton House Park (Sutton-in-the-Isle) (Sutton-In-The-Isle, Cambridgeshire, England)

Year: 1938

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

6 June 1938, at 3pm

Name of pageant master and other named staff

Pageant Master: Painter, Harold

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

On behalf of the Sutton Church Tower Restoration Fund

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

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Associated events

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Pageant outline

Episode 1. [1390]

Incident I – Arrival of the Stewards

No information

Incident II – The Gild Assembles

A stately procession from the parish church moves to the pavilion where the Master of the Gild and the Wardens are seated. There is a prayer and then the Master addresses the assembly. Erring members are named and judgment is declared.

Episode 2. [1390]

Incident III – Mirth, Merriment and Movement

At the end of the court a troupe of dancers enters and performs. Gild players enter and perform a Mystery play —‘Noah’—complete with a crude representation of the Ark. The play creates some mirth, provides a moral and ends happily.

Incident IV. Tumblers, Dancers and Mummers

No information

Incident V. Gaiety Ends

Members of the group from the Manor perform a stately dance. This concluded, dancing becomes general with whirling rings of dancers. At the end of the dance, all assemble for a blessing and then all process out.

Key historical figures mentioned

n/a

Musical production

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Newspaper coverage of pageant

n/a

Book of words

None known.

Other primary published materials

  • Sutton-in-the-Isle Pageant in conjunction with ye olde gilde fayre, June 6th, 1938 [Programme]. Sandy, 1938.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Programme in Cambridgeshire Local Studies Collection, Cambridge, Reference W06.0201

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

This is an example of a small-scale village pageant of the interwar period. Set in the late fourteenth century, the action is wholly focused on a medieval gild [or guild] fair. Since the pageant was part of a village fete, the intention doubtless was to connect the merrymaking of the Middle Ages with that of the twentieth century. The fete, with its whist drive, country dancing and concert (and pageant) was thus presented as having its antecedents in the mystery plays, mumming and stately dances of the medieval past. Indeed it seems that the fete itself was officially dubbed ‘ye olde gilde fayre’.1

Footnotes

1. ^ Sutton-in-the-Isle Pageant in conjunction with ye olde gilde fayre, June 6th, 1938 [Programme] (Sandy, 1938).

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Sutton-in-the-Isle Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1431/