Item List (150)

In 1999, the Harwich Society opened this small museum on the Pier, which includes a section on the Mayflower, helped in part by a $500 donation from the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. The Cultural Attaché at the US Embassy (London), T.J.…

Remarking on the changes between Southampton of the 1620s and the city in the 1850s, William Henry Bartlett provides an illustration of a ‘curious old cannon, presented to the town by Henry VIII’ which overlooks the stop where the ‘"Mayflower" and…

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…

John Howland was the Pilgrim passenger best known for having fallen off the ship halfway across the Atlantic! He was baptised in the Church of St Peter and St Paul (dating from the 13th to 15th centuries). In 1966, the Pilgrim John Howland Society…

The performance of Hugh Parry’s Mayflower pageant (which you can read more about here) was the biggest Mayflower event in London, and possibly in the country. The performances took place at the large Royal Horticultural Hall, Westminster, which was…

Hugh Parry’s Mayflower pageant was a huge draw throughout the autumn of 1920. In London, the pageant was performed for 25 days, from the end of October to the middle of November. But it returned to London in April 1921, where it ran for ten days at…

Rev. Hugh Parry’s historical pageant of the Mayflower was a roaring success throughout 1920 and into the following years. It debuted in Plymouth and had triumphant runs in Manchester and London, to the extent that the organisers were being pressed to…

The Westminster Abbey Chapter House was completed in 1255 as part of Henry III’s rebuilding of the abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, the Benedictine monks left; until 1863 this ornate building was used as a meeting…

Written by Canon Leville Lovett and his daughter Myra, ‘John Alden’s Choice’ was the crowning glory of Southampton’s 1920 celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower. Staged four times by a large cast of 444 amateur…

Interest in the Pilgrim Fathers was growing among Congregationalists on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 19th century. In 1891, the first International Congregational Council was held in London - an opportunity for Americans to tour the Pilgrim…