Croston Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: No information (Croston) (Croston, Lancashire, England)

Year: 1951

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

28 May 1951

Name of pageant master and other named staff

Names of executive committee or equivalent

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

Names of composers

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Numbers of performers

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Financial information

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Object of any funds raised

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Linked occasion

Festival of Britain and the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the Parish

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 3000

Notes

Source for audience information: Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1951, 3.

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

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Associated events

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Pageant outline

Anglians and St Aidan planting a cross which gave the town its name, 651

The Coming of the Normans

Granting of the Market

Founding of the Grammar School

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster rides through

Wedding of the Fleming Daughters to the Lords of Dalton and Hesketh

A Mystery Play given to honour the Earl of Derby

The Passing of Peter Lathom, the Pedlar, through the Parish

Robert Master, Rector of Croston in 1793 Divides the Parish into Chroley and Rufford

Declaration of the Creed and the Choir sings ‘Lift High the Cross’

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Áedán [St Áedán, Aidan] (d. 651) missionary and bishop [also known as Aidan]
  • John [John of Gaunt], duke of Aquitaine and duke of Lancaster, styled king of Castile and León (1340–1399) prince and steward of England

Musical production

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Newspaper coverage of pageant

Manchester Guardian

Book of words

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Other primary published materials

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References in secondary literature

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Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • A film of the pageant, ‘Pageant - The Ancient Parish of Croston May 1951, and Coffee Day Processions’, accessed 26 March 2017, is available at http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-pageant-the-ancient-parish-of-croston-may-1951-and-coffee-day-processions-1937/

Sources used in preparation of pageant

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Summary

The Croston Pageant was one of hundreds held across the country in celebration of the Festival of Britain in 1951. Like many other Festival pageants, it eschewed a focus on prominent figures—Kings and Queens, Dukes and Duchesses—in favour of a history of the common sorts who had made up the parish over the last millennia. Although not particularly religious in content, the pageant ended with a massed reciting of the creed, affirming the Christian faith. The Manchester Guardian, which covered the event in highly favourable terms, declared:

There is something inexorable about the progress of a pageant. It does not mind incongruities and accidents, forgotten lines or the stilted words of amateurs. It achieves its end through surfeiting the audience with colour and symbolism, music, and often – as here – through the entirely unprofessional delight and sincerity of actors and, above all of the children.1

The newspaper quoted the narrator of the pageant who declared afterwards: ‘“Our tale is told… our past unveiled before you. The stones have spoken in living words of flesh and blood”’.2 A colour film was made of the pageant.3

Footnotes

1. ^ Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1951, 3.
2. ^ Ibid.
3. ^ ‘Pageant - The Ancient Parish of Croston May 1951, and Coffee Day Processions’, accessed 26 March 2017, is available at http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-pageant-the-ancient-parish-of-croston-may-1951-and-coffee-day-processions-1937/

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Croston Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1522/