Item List (22)

Historical pageants, a sort of amateur re-enactment, were incredibly popular forms of engagement with the past in the early to mid 20th century. They usually took the form of a series of chronological episodes, often starting as far back as the…

One of the boldest commemorations of the Mayflower, and not just in Britain but the USA too, happened in a non-anniversary year. This was the Mayflower II, a reconstruction of what the original ship may have looked like, and its retracing of an…

Hugh Parry’s pageant, which you can read more about here, travelled around the UK throughout 1920 and into the next year. In February 1921, it came to Sheffield. The fanfare around the event was huge: newspapers had begun trailing the spectacular in…

Lancashire always claimed a certain affiliation with the Mayflower story because of Myles Standish’s local connection. As residents of one of the premier cities in “Standish country”, the people of Preston felt entitled to have their own performance…

Bredon’s Norton was the site of an old Tudor manor house which became the setting for a highly successful and popular Mayflower celebration during the tercentenary year of the voyage in 1920. One of the primary reasons for its success was the…

The Surrey Threatre was the venue for the London performance of Stirling and Hayes’s play about the Mayflower, which had had its debut in Plymouth at the end of August. It began its run in London in late September at the Surrey Theatre (since…

Historical pageants, a form of largescale amateur historical re-enactment, had seen their heyday in the 1920s - some, such as Southampton's John Alden's Choice, had focused especially on the Mayflower. After the Second World War, with the rise of the…

Taking place indoors in the Southampton Guildhall in May 1947, the Southampton Quincentenary Pageant was staged as part of a larger celebration put on to acknowledge the anniversary of the granting of a County Town charter 1447.Historical pageants, a…

The Pageant of London was a gigantic and spectacular historical re-enactment in four parts, staged 120 times over the summer of 1911. Linked to the Festival of Empire and Coronation of King George V, it was the biggest and boldest of the pageants of…

The ‘Pageant of Hampton’ took place in the Rectory House of St Mary's Church (known as ‘the Deanery’) in the summer of 1929. Historical pageants, a sort of amateur re-enactment, were incredibly popular forms of engagement with the past in the early…