Somersham Pageant
Pageant type
Performances
Place: Vicarage Gardens (Somersham) (Somersham, Huntingdonshire, England)
Year: 1908
Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors
Number of performances: 4
Notes
10–12 August 1908
[Three evening performances and a matinee for the local poor.]
Name of pageant master and other named staff
- Pageant
Master: De Ferrars, D'Arcy
Names of executive committee or equivalent
Pageant Committee
- Chairman: Dr Barlow
- Mrs Barlow, Rev. J.H. Hewison, Rev and
Mrs M. de Courcy Ireland, Mrs Rowe, Mrs Menagh, Mr Webb, Miss King, Miss
Parsons, Miss Goodenough, Miss Fyson, Mr King, Mr S. Rowe, Mr S. Smith, Mr E.
Oldfield, Miss Nix, Miss Medcalf, Mr A.L. Skeggs
Needlework and Costume
- Mrs de Courcy Ireland
Ground Works and Decoration
- Mr Gotobed
Refreshments
- Rev. J.H. Hewison
Finance
- Rev M. de Courcy Ireland
Chorus
- Mr Oldfield
Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)
- Sayers, Dorothy L.
- De Ferrars, D'Arcy
Names of composers
- De Ferrars, D'Arcy
Numbers of performers
150Financial information
- Takings: £100+
- Expenses: £61 11s 2d
- Profit
£39
[Source John Bell, The History of Somersham: As Dramatised for the Pageant of 1908 (St Ives, 1999), 46.]
Object of any funds raised
Three-fifths of the profits went to the Anglican Church and two fifths to the Nonconformists
Linked occasion
n/a
Audience information
Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest
1s 6d.
Associated events
Morris and Maypole Dancing
Pageant outline
Prologue. Masque of the Flower Queen
1. The Romans and Boadicea
a. Early British
b. Roman
c. Saxon
2. Hereward the Wake
3. Duke Brithnoth, First Lord of the Manor of Somersham
4. Bishop de Hotham and the Bishop’s Palace
5. The dispute between Thomas de Lisle, Bishop of Ely and Lady Wake
6. King Henry VIII
7. William Harvey and the Feoffee Charity
8. Charles I and Henrietta Maria visit Somersham
9. Oliver Cromwell
10. William Howard
11. James Hammond the Poet
12. Connections with the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge
Key historical figures mentioned
- Boudicca [Boadicea] (d. AD 60/61) queen
of the Iceni
- Hereward [called Hereward the Wake] (fl.
1070–1071) rebel
- Hotham, John (d. 1337) administrator
and bishop of Ely
- Lisle, Thomas (c.1298–1361) bishop of
Ely
- Blanche of Lancaster (1346?–1368)
- Henry VIII (1491–1547) king of
England and Ireland
- Charles I (1600–1649) king of
England, Scotland, and Ireland
- Henrietta Maria [Princess Henrietta Maria
of France] (1609–1669) queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, consort of
Charles I
- Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) lord
protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland
- Hammond, James (1710–1742) politician
and poet
Musical production
n/a
Newspaper coverage of pageant
Huntingdonshire
Post
Morning
Leader
The
Times
Somersham
Parish Magazine
Hunts
County News
Gloucestershire
Echo
Cambridge
Independent Press
Sheffield
Evening Telegraph
Book of words
n/a
Other primary published materials
- The History of Somersham: As Dramatised for the Pageant of 1908: Including the Stories of Queen Boadicea and Hereward the Wake. Np, [1908].
References in secondary literature
- Smith, Martin Ferguson. Dorothy L. Sayers and the Somersham Pageant of 1908.SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, volume 28 (2011).
- Bell, John. The History of Somersham: As Dramatised for the Pageant of 1908. St Ives, 1999.
Archival holdings connected to pageant
n/a
Sources used in preparation of pageant
n/a
Summary
The Somersham Pageant came about when the Rev. D’Arcy De Ferrars came to visit his brother, the Rev. M. de Courcy Ireland, Vicar of Somersham, in July 1908. De Ferrars was a figure vital to the revival of the northern pageant movement and had previously been responsible for the Ripon Festival in 1886, the Thirsk Pageant of 1906 and the Liverpool Pageant of 1907. It appears that after they began talking, the pageant was devised at extremely short notice (precisely three weeks)—much to the surprise of many from the village who believed such a feat was impossible.1
The dramatic choruses of the Somersham Pageant were written by the fourteen year-old Dorothy L. Sayers, whose father was the Vicar of the nearby village of Bluntisham. Sayers would go on to be a famous crime writer, poet and dramatist. The pageant was opened by the Earl of Sandwich,2 who lived nearby at Hinchingbrooke House (which was to itself to hold a pageant in 1911), and was an early example of a village pageant in the year of large pageants at Winchester and Cheltenham. Despite some rain on the first day, the pageant was a stellar success, with a matinee on the final day put on for the poor of the local area.3
The pageant raised £39 for local churches, with the Sheffield Evening Telegraph reported that the village intended to hold a further pageant in June the following year (though it is unclear whether or not this happened).4
Footnotes
1. ^ John Bell, The History of Somersham: As Dramatised for the Pageant of 1908 (St Ives, 1999), 6.
2. ^ The Times, 7 August 1908, 9.
3. ^ Bell, History of Somersham, 9, 45.
4. ^ Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 7 June 1909, 3.
How to cite this entry
Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘Somersham Pageant’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1521/