Newick Coronation Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Newick Playing Field (Newick) (Newick, Sussex, England)

Year: 1953

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

2 June 1953

[The performance was held in the afternoon.]

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Writer [Pageant Master]: Brooks, Miss E.
  • Presenter: Mr. L. Geeham

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

  • Brooks, Miss E.

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

100

Financial information

c.£250 was raised to cover the costs of all the events

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

Coronation of Elizabeth II

Audience information

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

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

  • Parade of local organisations around the village green
  • Commemorative service
  • Six television sets were installed in the village hall
  • Fireworks Display
  • Dance

Pageant outline

Coming of the Romans to Britain, 55 BC

Advent of Christianity 5th Century AD

Arrival of St Augustine

The Battle of Lewes

Queen Elizabeth I Visiting the Troops at Tilbury

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Augustine [St Augustine] (d. 604) missionary and archbishop of Canterbury
  • Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Sussex Agricultural Express

Book of words

n/a

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

The small Newick Pageant was one of hundreds held to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. First mooted in February that year, the Pageant held in June to coincide with Coronation Day was deemed to be ‘the high-light of the celebrations at Newick’, which also included church services, a torchlight parade, fireworks, and a broadcast of the Coronation itself at the village hall on six specially-installed television sets.1

Footnotes

1. ^ Sussex Agricultural Express, 5 June 1953, 7.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Newick Coronation Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1415/