The Bath Pageant: A Plaque Quest...
*Guest post by Laura Morgan - you can find her blog here*
There’s very little information on the internet about the 1909 Bath Pageant. All I knew as I found myself there one March morning recently was that a plaque commemorating the pageant could be found in Sydney Gardens, to the east of the city centre, so thence I wended my investigative way.
Sydney Gardens is a delight in itself – a beautifully laid-out and almost perfectly intact eighteenth-century pleasure gardens, with gently rolling lawns, centuries-old trees and cast-iron footbridges dating from 1800 crossing the Kennet and Avon Canal, as well as a Brunel-designed pedestrian bridge over the railway, added in 1840. The sloped pathways (everything is on a hill in Bath) make it an excellent playground for rollerskaters, at least two of whom I spotted making the most of the weather. The Holbourne Art Museum, formerly the Sydney Hotel and location in the early eighteenth century for all manner of public entertainments, looms enticingly over the entrance and on another day I might have made time to investigate it further, but today I had another mission.
Entering the gardens via a side gate, I immediately spotted a promising-looking vista: peeping through the trees, an elegant pillared portico with what looked very much like a plaque mounted on its inner wall. I moved closer. Bingo:
Having caught my rabbit, I surveyed the surrounding area, trying to work out whether this building could have served as the stage, but the age of the trees surrounding it suggested otherwise – a performance in this spot could only have been visible to a few dozen people. Some judicious on-the-spot googling told me that this building dated from slightly later, having been built for the Empire Exhibition of 1911 at the Crystal Palace, and subsequently re-erected in Sydney Gardens to commemorate the 1909 pageant. Further investigation revealed that the pageant itself was held not in Sydney Gardens at all, but in Royal Victoria Park, a mile or so to the west, and up another steep hill. No matter – I’d come this far.
Victoria Park on this sunny day was filled with families and lovers enjoying the unseasonal warmth, but it was immediately apparent that I’d come to the right place. With a glorious view across the whole city and a vast expanse of green grass, if you wanted to put on a show in Bath, this is where you’d do it. Unfortunately there’s little left to indicate precisely where the pageant was staged, although a faint indentation running diagonally across the lawn might conceivably show where a division was once enforced between performers and audience – but this was pure conjecture. This was a satisfactory exploration given the limited information available, but for more detail I am going to have to track down a copy of The Year Of The Pageant, a centenary celebration by Andrew Swift and Kirsten Elliott, in which I have no doubt I shall find the answers to all my questions. The hunt continues…