Historical Pageant of Old Barnstaple

Pageant type

Jump to Summary

Performances

Place: Theatre Royal (Barnstaple) (Barnstaple, Devon, England)

Year: 1914

Indoors/outdoors: Indoors

Number of performances: 3

Notes

28 January 1914, afternoon and evening; 29 January 1914, evening.

The third performance was put on due to demand. There was talk of restaging the pageant in August but this did not happen, probably due to the outbreak of the First World War.1

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master: Bartlett, W.C.
  • Chairman: Reverend R.J.E. Boggis, BD
  • Vice-Chairman: Dr J.R. Harper; Mr T.S. Watkinson
  • Secretary: Mr W.H.H. Martin
  • Editorial Secretaries: Mr L.E. Wilding; Mr R.J. Lemon
  • Treasurer: Mr W.C. Bartlett
  • Playwrights: Mr A.L.D. Skinner; Mr R.E.C. Balsdon; Rev R.J.E. Boggis
  • Historical Advisers: Mr T. Wainright; Reverend J.F. Chanter
  • Local Historian: Mr Sydney Harper
  • Musical Advisers: Dr H.J. Edwards; Mr Caleb Simper
  • Costume Advisers: Mr G.F. Tregelles; Mrs Balsdon; Mrs Boggis; Miss Crosskey; Miss Hambling
  • Stage Artist: The Reverend T.F. Daffen
  • Leader of the Musicians: Miss Benson
  • Choragus: Mr C.J. Williams
  • Mistresses of the Dances: Miss Couldridge
  • Marshal: Mr C. Lock

Notes

Mr W.C. Bartlett was a local resident of Barnstaple

Names of executive committee or equivalent

General Committee:

  • The St Mary Magdalene’s Church Synod and others

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

  • Skinner, A.L.D.
  • Balsdon, R.E.C.
  • Boggis, R.J.E.
  • Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Notes

Mr A.L.D. Skinner, Mr R.E.C. Balsdon and Rev. R.J.E. Boggis were the script-writers. Tennyson's poem 'The Revenge' was read.

Names of composers

  • Sibelius, Jean
  • Edwards, Dr H.J.
  • Davson, Gordon
  • Gounod, Charles
  • St George, George
  • Gurlitt, Cornelius
  • Wagner, Richard

Numbers of performers

200

Financial information

The pageant generated ‘total receipts over £150’ and an estimated profit of over £100, which was ‘a most gratifying figure.’2

Object of any funds raised

In aid of St Mary Magdalene’s Church

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

  • Grandstand: No
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: 2000

Notes

The renamed Queen’s Theatre in Barnstaple has a capacity of 680, almost certainly less than in 1914, and a newspaper reports a full capacity at each of the three performance.3

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

n/a

Pageant outline

Scene I. The St Brannock Scene, 6th Century AD

The scene here portrayed represents St Brannock preaching in a sacred grove at Barnstaple in the middle of the sixth century. Four white-bearded heathen priests, each with a sickle in his hand, are about to offer to the gods a human sacrifice—a seven-year-old boy, who is bound and laid upon a stone in the midst. A song is sung, but before the sacrifice is done, notwithstanding the pathetic and passionate entreaties of the child’s mother, St Brannock arrives accompanied by his son, St Berwyn, and a company of monks singing psalms. St Brannock commands the priests to withhold and places himself as their victim instead, proclaiming ‘he who will slay this child must first slay me.’ The priests listen to St Brannock’s gospel and the child is unbound before all the pagans are converted.

Scene II. The King Athelstan Scene, Early Tenth Century

The scene opens with a conversation between the Bishop of Crediton and four soldiers, who are guarding a captured Dane, named Rollo (defeated at the battle of Saunton Sands). They mock the Dane for his faith in Woden and Freya. Athelstan enters with Elfrida and condemns the Dane to death. The Bishop obtains three days’ respite to convert the captive. The King then grants Barnstaple its charter and allows a fair to be held there. The scene closes with a song of the town-crier.

Scene III. The Armada Scene, 1588

The scene presents a visit by Sir Richard Grenville, accompanied by Lady Grenville and other characters (who feature in Charles Kingsley’s novel Westward Ho!). On landing they are greeted by the Mayor, the Vicar, and a number of sailors who mistakenly think they are Spanish. Sir Richard hastens to explain to them that he wants men to fight the Armada. A number of men crowd around him, though Sir Richard bids the older of them to bear in mind that ‘there is a part to play at home’. Months elapse, during which Grenville is killed fighting 53 Spanish ships in the Azores. The scene ends with his ghost appearing to his wife to recite Tennyson’s poem ‘The Revenge’. He disappears and Lady Grenville falls fainting into the arms of sailors.

Scene IV. The Prince Charles Scene, 1645

The scene opens with a party of girls practising a Morris dance in front of the Guild Hall. Then the Mayor enters with various notables, and they talk about the impending royal visit of Prince Charles with Sir Edward Hyde and Lord Colepepper, who arrive and are loyally received. As the Prince watches the Morris dance, a messenger arrives from the royal army with news of the defeat at Naseby. The Prince appeals for the town’s support and all enthusiastically vow their allegiance to the King.

Scene V. Martin Blake Scene, 1657

The scene commemorates an historical event during the Commonwealth—the arrest of Martin Blake and his suspension from office as Vicar of Barnstaple. Blake is discussing the evils of the time with his family. A churchwarden warns them of Parliamentary outrages being committed at the vicarage. Soldiers arrive and arrest the vicar on suspicion of being a Royalist and plotting against Cromwell. Troops break into the house (the vicar having sought refuge) and drag him off to Exeter. He takes leave of his family and prophesies his return and the restoration of King and Church as the onlookers appropriately sing ‘God Save the King.’

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Æthelstan [Athelstan] (893/4–939) king of England
  • Ælfthryth (d. 999x1001) queen of England, consort of King Edgar [also known as Elfrida]
  • Grenville, Sir Richard (1542–1591) naval commander
  • Charles II (1630–1685) king of England, Scotland, and Ireland
  • Hyde, Edward, first earl of Clarendon (1609–1674) politician and historian
  • Colepeper, Thomas (1637–1708) soldier and engineer

Musical production

14-piece orchestra under Miss Benson. 

Choragus: Mr C.J. Williams

Musical Advisers: Dr H.J. Edwards and Mr Caleb Simper


Music performed:

  • Sibelius. ‘Valse Triste.’
  • Dr H.J. Edwards. Priest’s Chant. 
  • Gordon Davson. Druid’s Prayer. 
  • Trad. Town Crier’s Song.
  • Gounod. Airs from ‘Faust.’ 
  • St George. ‘Petit Suite.’ 
  • Gurlitt. ‘Overture to the Marionettes.’ 
  • Mrs Blake. Song, ‘Songs of the West.’
  • Wagner. March, ‘Tannhauser.’

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette
North Devon Journal
Western Times

Book of words

Historical Pageant of Old Barnstaple. Barnstaple, 1914.

Other primary published materials

n/a

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

n/a

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Barnstaple was an ancient town, whose ‘Burh’ or borough status dated back to the early tenth century. Despite its importance as a market town (claimed through a lost pre-conquest charter) and later as a woollen and cloth manufacturing centre, Barnstaple’s fortunes waned with the Industrial Revolution as its small population and relative isolation could not compete with the industry of Lancashire and Yorkshire.4

Like many small towns with a rich history, Barnstaple developed a rich tradition of historical pageants to compensate for its present-day backwater status. As the introduction to the programme read: ‘Barnstaple is a place of high antiquity, tracing its existence back with probability to the Roman period… It is a history of which the outside world ought to know more, and of which its inhabitants should grow ever more and more proud, and this pageant will help to these ends.’5 The pageant was organized by the Parish of St Mary Magdalene, ‘the most populous and the poorest of those in the town.’6

It is understandable that the pageant should have set its last scene in the seventeenth century, although the presence of two scenes addressing the Civil War in a deeply partisan manner flouted Louis Napoleon Parker’s code of avoiding sensitive issues that might stimulate political division. St Mary Magdalene’s Parish Church dated back to 1107 and had long subscribed to an Anglo-Catholic tradition, a continuation of the traditions of the St Magdalene’s Priory.7 Whilst the first scene, depicting the conversion of pagans and the averting of a human sacrifice had been something of a stock scene in pre-1914 pageants, the presence of local West Country saints (of which there are hundreds) stressed the divergence of the region from more widespread English Christian traditions.

The second scene restaged the granting of the town’s charter and granting of an annual fayre. Over many hundreds of years, the town had claimed this right as one that was pre-Conquest in origin, despite lacking any evidence of the charter. Thus the scene served to shore up a rather shaky claim that had been exerted since the eleventh century.

The third scene featured the naval hero Richard Grenville, who had many connections to the local area. Grenville is shown stirring up men to fight the Armada, before reappearing to his wife, dead, as a vision. The scene contained literary allusions to two Victorian depictions of the Spanish Armada: Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Revenge,’ the latter of which tells of Grenville’s death whilst raiding the Spanish treasure fleets in the Azores in 1591. The scene is an uncanny precursor to the real-life scenes only a few months later when Barnstaple men signed up to fight in the First World War. The Barnstaple War memorial lists 227 men who died out the town’s population of around 13000.8 A restaging of the pageant that was planned for October, featuring two new scenes, was not performed.9

The final two scenes of the pageant depicted Barnstaple’s Royalism during the Civil War and Commonwealth. In the first of these, the town’s revels—put on for the young Prince Charles, Lord Colepepper and Sir Edward Hyde (Clarendon)—are cut short by news of the catastrophic defeat at Naseby, which precipitated the final surrender of the Royalist forces. The following scene showed the defiance of Martin Blake, the vicar of Barnstaple who continued to worship in the Anglican faith and to profess allegiance to King Charles II despite frequent arrests at the hands of Commonwealth authorities. The final singing of ‘God Save the King’, a staple feature of all pageant endings at this time, was here given a particular twist because in this instance it was sung as a rebellious hymn, in keeping with the pro-Royalist but frequently-maligned position of Anglo-Catholics (to whose faith the Stuart monarchs were most closely aligned). The scene was in all probability written with close reference to J.F. Chanter’s Life and Times of Martin Blake (1910).

The pageant was a great success, exceeding all expectations. As the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette remarked, ‘It is safe to say that no one was prepared for so brilliant a performance as was ultimately given’.10 Originally, only two performances had been planned, but audience demand required a third performance for which the accommodation of the theatre was tested to the utmost’.11 The North Devon Journal remarked that: ‘Judging from the demand for seats a building twice as commodious could easily have been filled. The audience was most enthusiastic, and the general verdict is that the pageant, alike as a spectacular and a dramatic display, is one of the finest amateur productions ever seen in the West’12. In its next instalment, the newspaper declared: ‘From a spectacular point of view, the pageant was simply grand, nothing equalling it having ever previously been seen in North Devon.’13

The pageant was hailed as ‘the ideal method of teaching history—it gives the maximum in the way of vivid impression with the minimum if trouble—for the spectator!’14 It was felt to have succeeded in stirring a local sense of pride and in demonstrating what the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette called ‘the histrionic ability which is known to have existed in the town some years ago, and which was often utilised in the cause of charity, is just as pronounced in the present day, and wanted only the stimulus of a deserving cause and energetic promoters to bring it to the front.’15 The North Devon Journal agreed, praising the ‘histrionic ability’ of the performers and congratulating the pageant for employing a local man, W.C. Bartlett, as Pageant Master: ‘When they wanted a Master of the Pageant they did not go to London or elsewhere, but they chose a gentleman from their own town’.16

As several reports noted, the pageant’s greatest success was the sense it offered that something more could still be done to further raise the profile of the town: ‘The Barnstaple pageant is now but a pleasant memory, but it has awakened dreams of future accomplishments, and the suggestion that the performance may, later on, be repeated might be taken as another illustration of the saying that the “wish is the father of thought”’17. The North Devon Journal suggested that ‘splendid though it was, [it] only sampled the rich mine of dramatic incident represented by the stirring annals of Barnstaple.’18 Although a revival in October was prevented due to the outbreak of war, one of the writers and chief instigators of the pageant, the Rev. R.J.E. Boggis, published a History of the Parish Church of St Magdalene the following year.19 Further Barnstaple pageants were held including the 1917 ‘Children in Fiction’ pageant, a pageant celebrating the borough’s supposed millennium in 1930, and still further pageants in 1931 and 1934.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 12 August 1914, 4.
  2. ^ North Devon Journal, 5 February 1914, 2.
  3. ^ North Devon Journal, 5 February 1914, 2.
  4. ^ Louis Lamplugh, Barnstaple: Town on the Taw (Cullompton, 2002).
  5. ^ Historical Pageant of Old Barnstaple (Barnstaple, 1914), 3.
  6. ^ Ibid.
  7. ^ ‘Barnstaple Parish Church’, The Church of England, accessed 23 November 2015, http://www.achurchnearyou.com/parish/150401/.
  8. ^ ‘Barnstaple’, War Memorials, Imperial War Museum, accessed 23 November 2015, http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/796.
  9. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 12 August 1914, 4.
  10. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 3 February 1914, 10.
  11. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 29 January 1914, 6.
  12. ^ North Devon Journal, 29 January 1914, 5.
  13. ^ North Devon Journal, 5 February 1914, 2.
  14. ^ Ibid.
  15. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 29 January 1914, 6.
  16. ^ North Devon Journal, 5 February 1914, 2.
  17. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 3 February 1914, 10.
  18. ^ North Devon Journal, 29 January 1914, 5.
  19. ^ Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 29 January 1916, 3.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Historical Pageant of Old Barnstaple’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/982/