The Albury Pageant

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: St Peter and Paul Church (Albury) (Albury, Surrey, England)

Year: 1994

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 3

Notes

14–16 June 1994

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Director and Scriptwriter [Pageant Master]: May, Dennis
  • Costume Designer: Marion May
  • Lighting: Alexander Lyon
  • Wardrobe Mistress: Alice Edwards
  • Choreography: Carol Deane and Lynda Rice
  • Research for Script: Albury History Society

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

  • Dennis, May

Names of composers

n/a

Numbers of performers

42

Financial information

Festival Accounts 15 July 1994

Income:                       

  • Donations £676.76
  • Garden Party £424.35          
  • Pageant £796.68          

Expenditure:

  • Garden Party £35.00
  • Pageant £373.40

Total Raised £5135.75

Total Income over Expenditure: £4941.49

Object of any funds raised

In aid of the church fabric fund

Linked occasion

n/a

Audience information

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

A garden party

Pageant outline

Episode 1. Introduction – The Tillingbourne Valley

Episode 2. Conversion to Christianity and the Saxon Church

Episode 3. The 13th Century Legend of the Silent Pool

Episode 4. Thomas Weston v John D’Abernon, 1279.

Episode 5. The Pigeon House c.1550, Rev. William Oughtred 1610.

Episode 6. 17th Century May Day Fair

Episode 7. 18th Century Smugglers

Episode 8. Coronation Ball at Albury Park 1760

Interval

Episode 9. Artists and Agriculture 1780-1830

Episode 10. Henry Drummond 1819-1860

Episode 11. The Coming of the Railway 1849.

Episode 12. Rev George Portal, 1858-1871.

Episode 13. Village Life 1890-1914

Episode 14. Between the Wars, Ramblers 1920-1940.

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Oughtred, William (bap. 1575, d. 1660) mathematician
  • Drummond, Henry (1786–1860) politician and apostle of the Catholic Apostolic church

Musical production

n/a

Newspaper coverage of pageant

n/a

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

  • The Albury Pageant, 14, 15, 16 June 1993 [Programme]. Np. 1994. [Cost £3.50]

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Surrey History Centre, Woking Programme, Script, Financial Statements and Programme. Reference, 8261/2/10/10

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Small-scale village and church pageants were still occasional features of local community life in the 1990s; this is an example. It is perhaps worth pointing out that Surrey showed particular enthusiasm for village pageants throughout the twentieth century. The emphasis on modern history is also notable—this was not seen so much in village pageants held earlier in the century. Here, eight of the fourteen episodes deal with the period from the eighteenth century on. Given the long history of Albury (it was mentioned in Domesday Book), does this indicate the diminishing importance of the medieval past to the identity of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century communities?

Pageantry survived in Surrey long after it had vanished from the rest of the country, with significant pageants at Farnham (1988) and Cranford (2000).

Footnotes

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘The Albury Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1532/