The Making of Lingfield: A Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Lingfield Parish Church (Lingfield) (Lingfield, Surrey, England)

Year: 1977

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: n/a

Notes

31 May, 1 June, 2 June 1977, at 7pm.

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master: Palmer, Elizabeth

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

  • Palmer, Elizabeth

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

50

Financial information

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion


The Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Yes
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: n/a

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

Part of wider Jubilee celebrations including a model railway, gymkhana, riding display, kite flying, Punch & Judy, dancing display, adventure assault course and sports field.

Pageant outline

Key historical figures mentioned

n/a

Musical production



Newspaper coverage of pageant

East Grinstead Courier

Book of words

Elizabeth Palmer. The Making of Lingfield: A Pageant. N.P., 1977.

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

This is an example of one of the pageants that were staged to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 1977. The occasion marked something of a revival of the historical pageant movement, which had been in steady decline since the late 1950s. ‘The Making of Lingfield’ was a relatively ambitious pageant, by the standards of the later 1970s, and indeed was probably one of the larger such events staged to celebrate the jubilee. It was put on by Lingfield Parish Church, and performed outdoors by a 50-strong case on three evenings from 31 May to 2 June. The script was written by Elizabeth Palmer, a local writer; she seems also to have acted as pageant master for the occasion. The narrative content of the pageant was the history of the locality, which it traced from the time of King Alfred to the present day. While the pageant was quite a major event for a small place like Lingfield, it was only one element of a large programme of activities. On the day of Jubilee itself, the fun began at 2pm with ‘a grand procession from Mount Pleasant Road to the Racecourse where stalls, a model railway, and fenced off areas behind the Grandstand were ready for the gymkhana and riding display, kite flying, Punch & Judy, dancing display, adventure assault course and sports field’.1 The festivities, including the pageant, seem to have been a success, despite the rainy weather that dogged the Jubilee celebrations here as in many other places around the UK; as the East Grinstead Courier reported, ‘Even a thunderstorm failed to stop the celebrations.’2

Footnotes

  1. ^ The RH7 History Group, ‘Coronations and Jubilees’: http://www.rh7.org/factshts/corontns.pdf (accessed 2 June 2016).
  2. ^ Ibid.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘The Making of Lingfield: A Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1122/