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St Albans Pageant 1907 Queen Elizabeth at Gorhambury.

The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain

As part of our Spotlight on Arts & Humanities series we delve into the Redress of the Past project led by historian, Professor Paul Readman. In a new film, the culmination of his Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) AHRC funded research project, Professor Readman explores how the phenomenon of historical pageantry gripped the nation over the course of the twentieth century, and examines their importance to Britain today. 

 
Parker_microphone

Postcard showing Louis Napoleon Parker with a large megaphone. Image: David Clarke Collection, King’s College London

The birth of 'pageant fever'

In 1905, the charismatic impresario Louis Napoleon Parker staged the very first historical pageant. Engaging over 900 actors, musicians, costume makers and organisers, Parker put on a reenactment of the history of Sherborne, Dorset in the ruins of its castle. Special trains carried visitors from London, and 30,000 people are said to have watched the performances. A whole community was inspired, and the historical pageant movement was born.

Parker’s innovation sparked what people at the time called ‘pageant fever.’ The format of the Sherborne pageant set the precedent for its successors: a chronological sequence of episodes from local history, played out by actors dressed in historical costumes sewn by volunteers, with accompanying props, music, and souvenirs for the crowds to take home. Beginning with the story of the town’s foundation by St Aldhelm in 705 and ending with a visit from Sir Walter Raleigh in 1593, the spectacle comprised a total of eleven episodes which journeyed through 1200 years of Sherborne’s unique history, linking that to the larger history of Britain as a whole. 

Communities across the nation set about staging historical pageants of their own, retelling their own local histories in dramatic performances that encouraged the public to think imaginatively about their place and their past. By the interwar period, these spectacles had spread to large industrial towns and cities, who upscaled Parker’s original format to include up to 10,000 performers and address social and economic histories as well as the traditional tales of battles, kings and queens. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved as performers and organisers, millions more as supporters and spectators.   

Pageants were not typically conservative or nostalgic spectacles; the reverse was often the case. The performance of history was a crucial means of enlisting the past in the service of the future. Pageants were an important channel for the promotion of popular education; they were designed to instruct as well as to entertain. In doing so, their focus was on the needs, values, and aspirations of present-day communities. They helped sustain a strong sense of community identity, rooted in a shared history. – Professor Paul Readman, Principal Investigator of Redress of the Past

The popularity of pageants until at least the 1960s in villages, towns and cities alike tells us that historical pageants played a significant role in bringing communities together through an engagement with the history of their surroundings. Existing at the scale they did, they arguably represented one of those most significant forms of public engagement with history before new attractions, including historical documentaries, TV dramas and public heritage sites, replaced them. Firsthand accounts demonstrate the impression they left on participants. 

To be doing it within the walls of something that saw all this history was amazing… that felt really immersive… I think that brought history to life for us… Rather than dates and names, it was feelings and sensations…– Stephen Dunn, participant in the Carlisle Pageant of 1977. Interviewed in the Restaging the Past documentary.

Pageants are still staged in some places today, such as the town of Axbridge in Somerset, and their wider legacy is apparent in the popularity of ‘living history’ and historical reenactment societies. Yet their ongoing cultural significance has gone unappreciated. The Redress of the Past project asked what inspired millions of people to volunteer their time and resources into historical pageantry. 

 

The Pageants Database: A Major New Digital Resource

Backed by two grants from the AHRC, the Redress of the Past project worked with King's Digital Lab to create an open-access, searchable database of pageants in Britain.

The Redress of the Past Pageants database screenshot
Redress of the Past Pageants database

Drawing on many years of original research in libraries and archives across the UK, the database maps events across time and place, giving details of nearly 670 pageants. It includes essays on each pageant, some of which have been co-produced with non-academic collaborators, and many of which provide accounts from members of the public. Totalling c.15 million words, the database is the definitive resource for the study of historical pageants in Britain – for academics, students and the public at large.

Other publications by the project team include a Local History Study Guide to pageants research, available as a free download here, and a volume of essays by members of the project team, also freely available in open access form.

 

Engaging Local Communities 

The exhibitions and events put on in collaboration with museums and other groups enabled communities to connect their past and present. An exhibition at St. Albans, ‘Pageant Fever’, welcomed more than 19,000 visitors to explore the history of pageants in the city.

For the exhibition at Tullie House Museum and Gallery in Carlisle, the Redress of the Past team worked closely with the curator Edwin Rutherford to develop what he described as “a new model of co-curation for the museum”. Costumes, photographs and local memories from the city’s 1928, 1951 and 1977 pageants featured in an exhibition that also included newly recorded oral history testimonies deriving from the project research – many of which can be accessed through the project website.

 

Restaging the Past : a documentary film

The research influenced the activities of charitable organisations, feeding into successful Heritage Lottery Funding applications. The project’s work with Windrose Rural Media Trust was especially important, supporting the preservation of archive film, and leading to the creation of a new documentary film about pageants. In the words of the Trust’s Director Trevor Bailey, the collaboration has “greatly expanded the opportunities for us as filmmakers”, not least through the recording – often for the first time – of original pageant music.

Restaging the Past, the resulting documentary film made in collaboration with Windrose, tells the story of the historical pageant movement across the twentieth century. It features footage from the Sherborne Pageant of 1905, as well as pageants in St Albans (1907, 1948 and 1953), Carlisle (1928, 1951 and 1977), Birmingham (1938), Guildford (1977 and 1987) and elsewhere. The film begins and ends with the preparation and performance of the 2022 Axbridge Pageant in Somerset, a pageant which is restaged every ten years and which shows how vital such events can be to the life of 21st century communities, as new tales from the 20th and early 21st centuries are woven into the narrative.

History is no dry abstract thing, living only in archives. It lives also in the landscapes, streetscapes and sites of memory of communities; and it lives in people – all of us, who ourselves create history in our daily lives. Re-enacting the histories made by communities, and present in the lived environment of the same communities, both serves as a powerful celebration of these shared histories, while also helping us to preserve them not in aspic, or as museum pieces, but as something real, something alive.– Professor Paul Readman

Axbridge, and other contemporary pageants like it, demonstrate that pageants retain their potential to bond communities together by offering audiences an immersive experience of the past. More broadly, the story of pageantry in Britain prompts us to consider how and why dramatisations of history continue to captivate contemporary British audiences, proving that certain art forms provide us with creative avenues into the past that are not available elsewhere. 

Restaging the Past documentary

The film, Restaging the Past, is freely available to stream here

In this story

Paul Readman

Paul Readman

Professor in Modern British History