Leek Wootton Pageant

Pageant type

Notes

The Pageant was organised by local Women’s Institutes

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Performances

Place: Leek Wootton House (Leek Wootton) (Leek Wootton, Warwickshire, England)

Year: 1951

Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors

Number of performances: 2

Notes

30 June 1951 

[Performances at 3.30pm and 6pm]

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Producer (Pageant Master): Dracey, Mrs.
  • Mistress of the Robes and Properties: Miss Wright
  • Readers: Miss J. Powell and Miss R. Perkins.

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

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

Names of composers

Parry, Hubert

Numbers of performers

n/a

Financial information

n/a

Object of any funds raised

n/a

Linked occasion

1951 Festival of Britain

Audience information

  • Grandstand: Not Known
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: n/a

Notes

‘Large audiences’ were reported.

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

1s–6d.

Associated events

The pageant was part of a garden fete

Pageant outline

Page 1. The Settlement of the Wood, c. 1050.

The ancient village before the Norman Conquest. Outi, the Anglo-Saxon gentleman, manages to keep his position after the Conquest

Page 2. Piers Gaveston is Executed by the Earl of Warwick on Blacklow Hill in 1311.

[No information]

Page 3. The Church and Lands at Leek Wooton come by the favour of Henry VIII to Andrew Flamocke.

Flamocke surveys the new estate and is reminded that the rent is one red rose yearly.

Page 4. Elizabeth on her way to Kenilworth Castle.

The Queen and her procession are cheered by villagers.

Page 5. Lady Alice Dudley

After Robert Dudley’s desertion of his wife, fleeing to Italy, Lady Alice devotes the rest of her life to charity. She presents a communion plate to the vicar.

Page 6. 1792.

Leek Wootton church is rebuilt

Page 7. Maypole dancing, 1851

[No information]

Page 8. The opening of the Women’s Institute, 1926

[No information]

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Gaveston, Piers, earl of Cornwall (d. 1312) royal favourite
  • Beauchamp, Guy de, tenth earl of Warwick (c.1272–1315) magnate
  • Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of England and Ireland
  • Alice Dudley (1579–1669)

Musical production

H. Parry. Jerusalem.

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Leamington Spa Courier
Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser

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

  • The pageant was based on a book written by Canon S.E. Longland, former Vicar and Sir Wathen Waller, which has not been traced.

Summary

The small Leek Wooton Pageant, which in the view of the Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser ‘made a valuable contribution to rural Warwickshire’s festival programme’, was one of hundreds of pageants put on for the Festival of Britain in 1951.1 Whilst Warwickshire itself held few other pageants that year, nearby pageants were held in Dudley and at Rushden in Northamptonshire. Two years later, for the Coronation in 1953, Warwickshire held a large Pageant to mark the Coronation of Elizabeth II; this was the first major pageant in the county since the Kenilworth Pageant (1939). The Leek Wooton Pageant, which was based on a book written by Canon S.E. Longland, former Vicar and Sir Wathen Waller, was performed by local Women’s Institutes and seems to have been a moderate success, attracting ‘large audiences.’2

Footnotes

1. ^ Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 6 July 1951, 10.
2. ^ Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 18 May 1951, 6 and 6 July 1951, 10.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Leek Wootton Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1362/