St. Albans Pageant, 1907: Queen Elizabeth at Gorhambury.
Courtesy of St. Albans Museums.
The project team produced regular blog posts over the course of the period 2013-2017 (covering the years funded by the first AHRC) grant. These blog posts can be found below.
The Bury St Edmunds Pageant of Magna Carta made a pretty decent profit of £2,158, 17s 11d – about £33,000 in today’s money. With the imminent closure of the Playhouse theatre, yet good health of three cinemas, one local man hoped that the pageant was ‘proof of what can be done’ and that some of the profits could go to safeguarding dramatics in the town. But, following the pageant, there was only a ...
At our last Film Evening in Bury St Edmunds, we were delighted to meet Jill Burlingham, who was Christopher Ede's assistant during the 1959 pageant of Magna Carta. Jill very kindly gave us a series of photos from the event - some of which we had seen, but many we had not - and none in such high quality! You can see them below.
Aren't these just fantastic?! If you'd like to leave comments ...
This last weekend me and Paul finally visited Sherborne: the home of historical pageantry. As even the most casual observer of our website must know, it was in this small Dorset town in 1905 that the first historical pageant was held. Many different parts of the town still bear the imprint of this original event. We arrived on Friday night, and had time to look around the Pageant Gardens, laid out using the substantial profits ...
One of the central questions of our research is the vexed question of conservatism. Historians working from an explicitly left-wing perspective have tended to see the large-scale civic pageants of the first half of the twentieth century as attempts to re-assert class structures and invented ideas of a 'traditional' society. By portraying a long and varied history, pageant-masters aimed to give a sense of stability to a rapidly industrialised and urbanised nation. Not surprisingly, this ...
In 1928, 1951 and 1977 the people of Carlisle staged large and highly successful historical pageants. Thousands of Cumbrian citizens took part in these events which depicted the colourful history of a part of the UK which has always been important in the national story of the British Isles. From Roman times to the coming of the railways, Carlisle was a place of strategic significance and its citizens are proud of their past. This exhibition ...
I recently enjoyed a much-needed weekend away in east Suffolk, taking in, among other things, the Aldeburgh festival, Southwold pier and Framlingham castle. It was in the castle – or more specifically in the Lanman museum of local history within the castle – that I stumbled upon a poster advertising the Framlingham pageant of 1931.
Above: Poster in the Lanman
Museum advertising the Framlingham pageant.
Performed in the grounds of the castle, the pageant seems to have ...
Last night (Monday 8 June) Tom and I went to Bury St Edmunds for the third of our pageants film nights in Moyse’s Hall Museum, where our exhibition is currently being staged. Forty-seven people were present to watch the films, meaning that more than 130 have attended the three film nights. Half a dozen or more of those present on Monday had performed in one of the pageants.
We showed three films. The first ...
Despite glorious summer sunshine, there was an excellent turn-out for the St Albans Pageant Study Day on 6 June. It seems pageant enthusiasm runs high here, just as we have found it does in Bury St Edmunds! Many people had brought along pageant-related memorabilia and memories. Peter Swinson – son of pageant-master Cyril Swinson – had brought a wonderful silk scarf from the 1953 pageant. Featuring lively drawings of some of the main characters – including Boudica, of ...
On Friday 22nd June we staged our first film evening at Moyse's Hall. We were blown away by the enthusiasm for this event - 50 people came, a full capacity, and our other two showings are equally booked out. After Paul introduced our project, gave a description of the eruption of 'pageant fever' across Britain in the early twentieth century, including Bury St Edmunds's own 1907 pageant, I played a few clips from the ...
During the initial burst of 'pageant fever', souvenirs were big business. Louis Napoleon Parker always stressed that the point of his 'folk-plays' was not to make money, but to instead bring the community together, dissolving distinctions of class (if only momentarily!). But plenty of official and unofficial vendors realised the potential profits that could be made. The ubiquitous souvenir of pageantry throughout the twentieth century has been the illustrated and colourful programme. Almost always costing ...