Meldreth 900th Anniversary Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Holy Trinity Church (Meldreth) (Meldreth, Cambridgeshire, England)

Year: 1990

Indoors/outdoors: Indoors

Number of performances: 1

Notes

10 June 1990

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Director [Pageant Master]: Power, Micahel
  • Commentator: Peter Allen
  • Lighting: John Brand
  • Sound: Fred Askew
  • Costumes Organised by: Jackie Billingham, Rosemary Childrerley, Paula Mortimer and Jo Padfield

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

Names of composers

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Numbers of performers

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Financial information

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Object of any funds raised

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Linked occasion

900th Anniversary of the founding of the village

Audience information

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

A time capsule was put together by the Primary school, including modern coins, postage stamps, sweet wrappers, an empty drink can, register of electors, booklets of local schools, a copy of Meldreth Matters, a newspaper, a teenager’s magazine, and a Meldreth-to-London train ticket.

Pageant outline

Scene 1. Vikings Plunder the Village

Scene 2. King Edgar establishes peace

Scene 3. Building of a wooden church

Scene 4. Invasion of Normans

Scene 5. Explanation of St. Christopher through the wall paintings

Scene 6. Plundering of the church by the Royal Commissioners

Scene 7. Andrew Marvell, poet. Charles I and Cromwell. Plundering of the church by Cromwellian soldiers.

Scene 8. 1850. The Coming of the Railway

Scene 9. The Coming of Methodism

Scene 10. 1910: The Village School

Scene 11. The First World War

Scene 12. The Second World War

Scene 13. Finale.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Edgar [called Edgar Pacificus] (943/4–975) king of England
  • Marvell, Andrew (1621–1678) poet and politician

Musical production

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Newspaper coverage of pageant

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Book of words

None known

Other primary published materials

  • 900th Anniversary Pageant: Programme of Events. Meldreth, 1990.

References in secondary literature

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Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Programme in Cambridgeshire Local Studies Collection, Cambridge, Reference E07.2704

Sources used in preparation of pageant

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Summary

The Pageant was a revival of the text of one first performed in the 1950s in the village of Meldreth, which lies on the Cambridge to London railway line. The Pageant was common of more modern productions, in including scenes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in particular the First World War.

Footnotes

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Meldreth 900th Anniversary Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1428/