Haslingfield Pageant, Two Hundred Years of Village Life, 1360-1560

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Grounds of the Manor House (Haslingfield) (Haslingfield, Cambridgeshire, England)

Year: 1935

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: n/a

Notes

Summer 1935

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Producer and Pageant Master: Breeze, M.S. Gabrielle

Notes

  • Breeze, M.S. Gabrielle

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

Proceeds in aid of the Pageant itself, with the hope of holding one every year. 

Linked occasion

n/a

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 Pageant Pilgrimage to the local church

Pageant outline

Scene I. Haslingfield Gild Feast.

Scene II. Scenes in a village Hostel on the eve of a pilgrimage procession

Scene III.

Episode 1. Lord de Scales setting forth from the Manor House to do battle against Joan of Arc.

Episode 2. Lord de Scales returns to Haslingfield with the hinges of the prison from which he escaped in France

Scene IV. The Visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Manor House owned by Doctor [Thomas] Wendy.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Scales, Thomas, seventh Baron Scales (1399?–1460) soldier and administrator
  • Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland
  • Wendy, Thomas (1499/1500–1560) physician

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

n/a

Book of words

None known

Other primary published materials

  • Two Hundred Years of Village Life, 1360-1560. Cambridge, 1935. [A Flyer advertising the pageant].

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of Flyer in Cambridgeshire Local Studies Collection, Cambridge, Reference M05.0115

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

‘By what authority do we urge for support in the production of this Pageant? We answer that it is the History of Haslingfield itself which makes this silent demand for the perpetuation in our memories of the glowing episodes in the lives of our ancestors and predecessors.’1 So wrote the Pageant Master and author M.S. Gabrielle Breeze, an authority on East Anglian Catholicism.2 The author proceeded to add that ‘It is my aim to make this pilgrimage live yet once again in Pageant form. Such a Pageant should be of interest, not only to Haslingfield itself, but also to all the villages and towns of Cambridgeshire including our University town.’3 Interestingly, the proceeds were in aid of the Pageant itself ‘It is hoped that the balance will enable the Society to produce a similar Pageant every successive year.’4 There are, unfortunately, no records of subsequent pageants in Haslingfield, which was one of a surprising number held in Cambridgeshire villages at Harston (1929) and Bassingbourn (1953).

Footnotes

1. ^ M.S. Gabrielle Breeze, Two Hundred Years of Village Life, 1360-1560 (Cambridge, 1935), unpaginated.
2. ^ See M.S. Gabrielle Breeze, Our Lady of Cambridgeshire (Cambridge 1933) and ‘A FAMOUS EAST ANGLIAN RELIC’ Tablet, 13 October 1934, 5.
3. ^ Breeze, Two Hundred Years.
4. ^ Ibid.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Haslingfield Pageant, Two Hundred Years of Village Life, 1360-1560’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1486/