The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain, 1905-2016

Twentieth-century Britain was subject to regular bouts of 'pageant fever'. Communities of all sizes and character across England, Scotland and Wales staged theatrical re-enactments of events from local and national history with thousands of men, women and children involved as performers, organizers and spectators. This was national costume drama on a grand scale. Over the course of the twentieth century many hundreds of events were mounted by communities and institutions, ranging from small churches and village communities to large cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. In addition, institutions as diverse as the Army, the Church of England the Women's Co-operative Guild also staged historical pageants. The fever was especially intense at certain times, notably the Edwardian era, the 1930s and 1950s (encouraged by the Festival of Britain and the 1953 Coronation), but the tradition never fully died out and there were revivals in the 1970s and during the millennium celebrations. A distinctive feature of historical pageantry has been the involvement not only of communities but also of prominent individuals, such as G.K. Chesterton and G.M. Trevelyan.

Drawing on oral and written evidence, this project is a landmark intervention. It will provide an authoritative treatment of a subject that has largely escaped academic scrutiny despite the rich insights that these apparently ephemeral events can give into popular understandings of the past. The project also offers key insights into the role of 'heritage' in leisure activities, the interaction between local, national and imperial identities, and the character of community life. Differences and similarities between the regions and nations of Britain, and continuities and changes over time, are central to the project and will be explored in depth. The comprehensive coverage of local events - based on geographically dispersed sources - will support, stimulate and publicize the activities of local historians and historical associations, and provide a useful resource for all those interested in the history of communities and institutions, including schools. It will recover the stories that communities and institutions told about themselves. It will result in a comprehensive database of historical pageants, a monograph envisaged as the key book on the subject, and an edited volume of essays situating the British movement in its international context. Every historical pageant for which any significant record exists comes under the scope of the study and the interactive publicly-accessible resource at its centre.

The website will include general commentary on the pageant movement, representative images of pageant-related ephemera, and oral testimonies from witnesses to historical pageants. It will allow interaction between the public and the project, enabling individual users and local history societies - some of whom will be actively involved in the project - to contribute their own memories and memorabilia. It will feature interactive maps, allowing users to locate pageant venues and to track the incidence of performances and themes over time. The website will be an important tool for historians, as well as scholars of literature and drama, historical geography and cultural studies. Through the database, these users will be able to access and process a vast body of information relating to the content, organization and experience of historical pageants, allowing the exploration of, for example, the evolving depiction of specific historical events and themes, the authorship of pageant scripts, and constructions of popular memory. The database will also encourage wider use of pageant-related archival holdings by academic and other users. The project will thus enhance academic and non-academic understandings of an important twentieth-century phenomenon, drawing together a remarkably rich collection of visual, oral and textual resources, much of which is on the verge of being lost.

Who benefits?
The project will significantly impact on public engagement with history. The database and website will be of value to diverse groups, including:
- Archives/museums
- Local historians/local history societies; others interested in local history including schools
- Institutions investigating their own history, e.g. churches/organizations which staged pageants; custodians of pageant sites (e.g. National Trust)
- Family historians
- Those promoting local historical awareness, e.g. Victoria County History, British History Online, www.historypin.com
- Local history organizations, including named Project Partners: Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle; St Albans Museums; Uttlesford Recorders; St Edmundsbury Heritage Service
How?
The project will stimulate and support public engagement with 20th-century British history. The first version of the website will be available early in year 1, along with a project blog and 'pageant of the month' feature, with a mechanism to support public submission of material (see Technical Appendix). Anticipated benefits include:
- Recognition by user groups of the value of pageants for understanding the history of British villages, towns and cities. In pageants large numbers of participants and spectators of all ages and backgrounds sought to capture and interpret the history of their communities. Not only were pageants important socio-historical moments, but they also constitute a valuable type of folk history. By identifying, recovering and making accessible historical evidence of pageants, the project supports and publicizes the work of local historians, as well as stimulating local communities' and institutions' interest in their own histories.
- Project Partners will benefit from assistance in recovering and recording evidence of pageants in their districts, and from participation in project events. The good practice in retrieving evidence of pageants that this generates will be disseminated in the wider local history constituency.
- Increased public knowledge/understanding of the history of institutions which staged pageants commemorating their history, including the labour movement, women's organizations and religious groups. For example, the Anglican Church mounted a major pageant in 1909, and many parish churches staged multiple performances across the period. The networks established by the AHRC-funded Building on History project will help the pageant project make this history accessible to contemporary Anglican clergy and churchgoers.
- Greater knowledge/understanding of resources in museums/archives, including those run by local authorities, leading to more footfall among all types of user.
- Impact on repositories' acquisition policies, as the significance of pageant material is highlighted.
- The website will be promoted as a resource for schools: its content (images, texts, finding guides and downloadable schools guidance pack) will support teaching at various levels from advanced primary to A-Level/Higher.
- The project's record of individuals' participation in pageants will facilitate the work of family historians and genealogists, a key constituency for all historical e-resources.
- The project's recovery of documentation of pageants staged at sites now maintained by heritage bodies (e.g. Wolvesley Castle, Craigmillar Castle) will not only assist in the interpretation of such sites for visitors, but could facilitate the reenactment of the spectacles these pageants generated as a visitor attraction.
- The project will inform and contextualize forthcoming pageant performances (e.g. in Bury St Edmunds in 2014); it may also encourage the organization of future pageants, and will contribute to ongoing public debates about local/national identities.
- The skills developed by the RAs (e.g. interpreting sources, interviewing, event planning) will not only enhance their potential contributions to academia, but also to other areas, e.g the heritage sector.