Hull Grammar School Pageant

Pageant type

Jump to Summary

Performances

Place: Holy Trinity Church Yard in front of West Door (Kingston upon Hull) (Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire, East Riding, England)

Year: 1979

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 2

Notes

18–19 July 1979

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Pageant Master: Tolson, R.T.

Notes

Tolson was the Headmaster

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

Deakin, B.

Notes

Deakin was a master at the school

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

500th Anniversary of the Foundation of the School

Audience information

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

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

A concert and exhibition held at the school.

Pageant outline

Scene 1. 1479. The School Receives the Foundation from Bishop John Alcock

This scene shows us the endowment of the School by Bishop John Alcock. Although there had been a School in existence before 1479, the Bishop’s foundation of a Chantry in Holy Trinity safeguarded the Master’s salary and gave the School a safe foundation.1

Scene 2. 1583. The Will of William Gee

The School buildings are crumbling; the endowments have been lost through the action of the Crown. Alderman Gee, twice Mayor, was especially generous to the School and supplied money and building materials for the new fabric which can still be seen on the South Church Side facing the Market Place. He also made provisions in his will, and once again, the School flourished.

Scene 3. 1643. Kingstown, no town for the King

In 1663 Hull was undergoing its second siege during the Civil War. The Town and its leaders were strong adherents to the Cromwellian cause. Historical liberties are taken by the introduction of Andrew Marvell on a visit to the City, although his whereabouts at this period are unknown.

Scene 4. 1670. Royal Oak Day

In scene 4, set less than thirty years later, we are shown a disagreement between the Master, Catlyn, a staunch Royalist, and the Puritan leaders of Hull. The scene begins with an enactment of the traditional ‘barring-out’.

Scene 5. 1760. A School with A Mission

William Wilberforce, MP, is visiting the School as was his custom when in Hull. During this period the Master was the Reverend Joseph Milner, one of the outstanding Masters in the School’s history. The scene ends with a representation of the anti-slavery operations begun by Wilberforce and others of the Anti-Slavery League.

Scene 6. 1879. Sad Farewell to the School in the Old Town

The scene now moves to 1879, 399 years after the endowment of the School and shows the differences of opinion about its condition and its future. It also heralds the move from the Tudor school-house where it had lived for so many centuries to the “new” premises in Leicester Street.

Scene 7. 1940s. Leicester Street in Wartime

In an ‘East Coast Town’ in the early 1940s, boys from the local Gramma School acted as messengers during the ‘blitz’. School life was exciting in these times but for headmasters, there were problems!

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Alcock, John (1430–1500) administrator and bishop of Ely
  • Marvell, Andrew (1621–1678) poet and politician
  • Wilberforce, William (1759–1833) politician, philanthropist, and slavery abolitionist
  • Milner, Joseph (1745–1797) Church of England clergyman and ecclesiastical historian

Musical production

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

n/a

Programme: 500 Years have rolled away (1479-1979). [Hull], 1979.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • DEHG/9/1/7/12, Hull Grammar School Pageant Programme

    Hull History Centre

  • DEHG/9/1/7/10, Papers relating to arrangements for the Lower School pageant, 1979

    Hull History Centre

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Hull Grammar School had held a pageant in 1936, celebrating 450 years since its opening in 1486. Confusingly, the 1979 pageant took another date, its endowment seven years earlier in 1479 as the moment of the school’s founding. A number of the scenes in the two pageants were similar. Both invented a scene in which Andrew Marvell, an alumnus, returned to the beleaguered Hull during its siege during the Civil War, and both also featured the staunch Royalism of the school master John Catlyn. Whilst there is no conclusive evidence that the script was written with reference to the previous pageant, it is likely that a number of ‘old boys’ who attended would have performed in the first performance forty three years before.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Synopses taken from Programme: 500 Years have rolled away (1479-1979) ([Hull], 1979), unpaginated.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Hull Grammar School Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1291/