Pageants 48

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  1. The Dover Pageant
    Dover’s staging of a historical folk-play in 1908 was a nationally important and spectacular example of an Edwardian town gripped by ‘pageantitis’. Directed by the original master himself, Louis Na...

  2. Light Over England Historical Pageant
    The vast majority of pageants included scenes highlighting the importance of the Christian religion to a place or people, and also to the development of the English nation. Yet, for all that religi...

  3. The Harrow Historical Pageant
    The Harrow Historical Pageant was one of the first of the inter-war pageants to return to the traditional civic style of the pre-1914 movement (see also the entry for the Reading Historical Pageant...

  4. The Chipping Sodbury Pageant
    The Chipping Sodbury Pageant was a small pageant staged four times in south Gloucestershire in summer 1935. It was produced and mostly written by Cicely Bedford, who had been producing plays since ...

  5. National Pageant of Wales
    The National Pageant of Wales, which took place in Cardiff in 1909, was almost certainly the first major pageant to be staged in the principality, and remains to this day undoubtedly the largest. W...

  6. Scottish Historical Pageant
    In July 1927, the Scottish Historical Pageant was held in the grounds of Craigmillar Castle in Edinburgh. With nearly 4000 performers, 200 horses and a grandstand capacity of 10,000— and a total au...

  7. Silver Jubilee Pageant
    There was a revival of historical pageantry in 1977 on the occasion of the queen’s silver jubilee, and David Clarke’s pageant in Guildford was one of the most notable examples. Clarke had worked wi...

  8. The Pageant Masque of Anne Boleyn, Blickling Hall
    The Pageant Masque of Anne Boleyn was first staged at Blickling Hall in 1909, shortly after Nugent Monck’s first pageant in Norfolk, which saw his longstanding engagement with the dramatic life of ...

  9. Sutton Coldfield Pageant
    The small town of Sutton Coldfield was fiercely proud of its history, as only a town on the outskirts of Birmingham could be. The Sutton Coldfield Pageant of 1928 commemorated the granting of the t...

  10. The Pageant of Centuries
    Buckden Palace was formerly the seat of the Bishops of Lincoln, first constructed sometime in the twelfth century and continually extended, rebuilt and repaired (due to recurring fires) over the ce...

  11. The Pageant of Essex
    Following on from the Barking Pageant in 1931, the larger-in-scope Pageant of Essex was staged in summer 1932 to raise money for the newly opened King George Hospital in Ilford. Directed by Frank L...

  12. The Greenwich Night Pageant
    Taking place against the backdrop of economic depression, the Greenwich Night Pageant partly aimed to stimulate the new ‘important industries’ that had sprung up along the Thames, and, during the r...

  13. Kingston Church Pageant
    The author of the Kingston Pageant, W.E. St Lawrence Finny, went even further than the great Pageant Master, Louis Napoleon Parker, who famously avoided the Civil War so as not to offend political ...

  14. Naworth Castle Pageant
    The Naworth Castle Pageant was a small event that took place in 1960. It was really more of a fete and short play than a ‘true’ historical pageant. The focus was solely on the Tudor period and Henr...

  15. Warwickshire Coronation Pageant
    The Coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 heralded a ‘new Elizabethan Age’, evidenced by the music of Benjamin Britten (whose opera Gloriana was unfortunately a failure), the photography of Cec...

  16. The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester
    The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester took place in the summer of 1930 and was the top billed event of a fundraiser for the Gloucestershire Royal Infirmary—which was trying to raise £20000 for...

  17. Ashdown Forest Pageant
    It was in September, 1928, that Mrs Olaf Hambro of Kidbrooke Park…broke to me the news that the Village Hall was badly in need of £1,500 for building its new wing, and that she and Miss Needham tho...

  18. The Pageant of London
    The Pageant of London was the main attraction of the Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace in 1911. Undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious pageant of the Edwardian period, if not the whole twent...

  19. The Three Towns Pageants
    The Festival of Britain 1951 was the key cultural event of the period.3 Nationwide, a programme of events was skilfully planned with the aim of embracing modernist influences on British culture whi...

  20. Rotherhithe Church Pageant
    The Rotherhithe Church Pageant, held at St. Mary’s, Rotherhithe, was a highly anticipated event, not only in the community—where ‘humble workers’ in the district made their own costumes under the s...