Illuminated Pageant of Dartford and its Parish Church

Pageant type

Jump to Summary

Performances

Place: Holy Trinity Church (Dartford) (Dartford, Kent, England)

Year: 1967

Indoors/outdoors: Indoors

Number of performances: 4

Notes

11–14 April 1967.

[Performances held in the enings. The pageant was staged by the Friends of Holy Trinity Church].

Name of pageant master and other named staff

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

  • Porteus, G.H.

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Episode 1

The Celtic Church and the arrival of Paulinus in London; the growth of Canterbury as a religious power. 

Episode 2

The Church under William the Conqueror

Episode 3

Thomas Becket: ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ Ralph of Dartford, master mason at Westminster Abbey, relates building the chapel at St. Thomas. Jumping forward many centuries, the episode also discusses the great floods of 1866, which came 3 feet up the church walls.

Episode 4

Christmas in Dartford, listing various gifts and benefactions provided by wealthy citizens,

Episode 5

The Puritan era and the Civil War in Dartford, during which the vestry was used as a powder magazine and armoury. Again projecting forward across the centuries, this episode also deals with the building of the organ in 1793, and its replacement in 1850 at great expense (borne by the parishioners). The latest organ installed in 1913.

Episode 6

Cardinal Wolsey’s visit to Dartford in 1527, riding into town on a mule.

Episode 7

Remembrance of the dead from the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War, the War of Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the First World War and the Second World War. An account of the bombing of Dartford during World War III, and a list of some who died. The execution of Christopher Waid for heresy in 1555.

Episode 8

The Reformation

Episode 9

Hamo de Hethe, the Bishop of Rochester, and his renovations of the church after 1333.

Episode 10

The building of the Chantry by Thomas Sampit in 1338.

Episode 11

The Prologue from the Canterbury Tales.

The marriage of Lady Isabella, daughter of King John, in 1235. The marriage is done by proxy, before Isabella is taken her husband, the Emperor, at Worms. The Archbishop of Cologne performs a ceremony in Latin.

Episode 12

The various bells. The story of William De ’Ath. The story of William Trevithick, who died in Dartford a pauper in 1833.

Episode 13

Thomas de Secheford, the vicar who was involved in the Peasants’ Revolt.

Episode 14

Thomas Havercroft, a young friend of Henry V

Episode 15

A local wood carver.

Episode 16

Randall Thomas Davidson who was a curate at the church before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

Episode 17

John Sodeman, the hermit of the chapel in the sixteenth century.

Episode 18

John Spilman, the German jeweller to Elizabeth I; and the first paper-mill in England set up in 1585.

Episode 19

The Patronal festival, a baptism and the font which was only 150 years old.

Episode 20

The founding of the Priory of Saints Mary and Margaret in 1372.

Episode 21

Lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V [featuring the voice of Laurence Olivier]; the procession of Henry V’s corpse and his retinue with Queen Katherine from Dover to London.

Epilogue

The hermit muses on the meaning of the church, its assistance to the poor, and its work as a patron of the arts and education.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Paulinus [St Paulinus] (d. 644) bishop of York and of Rochester
  • Becket, Thomas [St Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London] (1120?–1170) archbishop of Canterbury
  • Wolsey, Thomas (1470/71–1530) royal minister, archbishop of York, and cardinal
  • Hythe [Hethe], Hamo (b. c.1270, d. in or after 1357) bishop of Rochester
  • Isabella [Elizabeth, Isabella of England] (1214–1241) empress, consort of Frederick II
  • Davidson, Randall Thomas, Baron Davidson of Lambeth (1848–1930) archbishop of Canterbury
  • Henry V (1386–1422) king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
  • Catherine [Catherine of Valois] (1401–1437) queen of England, consort of Henry V

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

n/a

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

  • Porteus, G.H. A Church, A Town: Text for an Illuminated Pageant of Dartford and its Parish Church. Dartford, 1967.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Herne Bay Coronation Pageant 1937. Herne Bay, 1937. 6d.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Church pageants remained quite popular into the 1960s and 1970s (see St Wilfrid's (1965)). This is an example of one such pageant, focusing on the religious history of Holy Trinity Church, Dartford. Composed of 22 episodes, it seems to have been quite an elaborate production. The content illustrates an evident desire to link the history of the church and the town to larger national events, including the murder of Thomas Becket, the Reformation, and the Civil War. One notable feature of the pageant was its lack of adherence to a straightforward chronological structure: the penultimate episode, for example, dealt with an event in the fourteenth century, but this came after an episode dealing with the life of the famous archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Thomas Davidson (1848-1930). Moreover, the action of some individual episodes ranged across several centuries (episode 3, for example). Yet despite—or perhaps because of—such innovation, the pageant was likely a significant success, since it was repeated in still-more-elaborate form in 1970, with several extra or modified scenes.

Footnotes

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Illuminated Pageant of Dartford and its Parish Church’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1464/