The Horbury Pageant Players (or a Pageant that wasn’t)
The post-war era – a time of rationing, scarcity, and prolonged austerity – was a very difficult time to hold pageants. Despite this, the people in the village of Horbury, West Yorkshire seemed determined to hold what was referred to as the ‘second historical and religious’ pageant (though I can find nothing about the earlier one) in November 1947.
A summer gala held at the end of August attracted 5000 people and raised over £300 for the pageant and the town appointed Mary Johnson as the Pageant Queen.[1] Nonetheless, it was announced in late October (a few weeks before the scheduled start) that ‘Because of staggered hours and the petrol restrictions Horbury Pageant Committee has decided to postpone its second historical pageant. The positon will be reviewed again in January.’[2] Further reasons given included a lack of costumes.[3] As one may guess, the pageant remained indefinitely postponed.
The demands of
postwar austerity made the physical staging of pageants incredibly difficult.
The Bradford Centenary Pageant in July 1947 had struggled to attract sufficient
numbers (eventually the army stepped in to provide background actors). Worse
still, the Board of Trade allowed only a tiny proportion of the coupons to purchase
rationed material for costumes. This was an irony not lost on the
textile-producing people of Bradford who condemned everything from the choice
of printers to the Pageant poster design, described as ‘Detestable cubism’ by one resident. Elsie Hughes
wrote complaining about the Pageant:
As a Bradford ratepayer, I, with many more Bradford citizens, think this state of affairs an insult to the many industrial workers in Bradford. We in Tong…are still in back-to-back houses, and without baths, fully aware houses cannot be had for quite a long period. The money wasted on pageants at this juncture is unnecessary. Also, I fail to understand the mentality of our City Fathers, with a Labour Council, approving of such a state of affairs.[4]
They stayed away from the Pageant, which lost over £13000. The nearby town of Wakefield cancelled its pageant the following year for fear of another spectacular flop.[5] The tradition of pageantry largely died out in West Yorkshire after this, with councils unwilling to risk another Bradford. The city was one of the few places in the country which refused to celebrate the Festival of Britain with one commentator adding to the parsimonious Yorkshire stereotype, remarking that ‘The City Council are not going to spend money on festivities.’
Above: 'Detestable Cubism': The Poster of the Bradford Centenary Pageant (1947)
Nonetheless, the people of Horbury (Horbrarians?) were hard to dissuade. Further annual summer galas were held (raising £298 in 1948) organised by the Pageant Committee (of around 50 local residents), which also organised sheepdog trials and dog shows.[6] Whilst the Pageant Committee petered out in the early 1950s, the ghostly spirit of the Pageant lived on. The Horbury Pageant Players were formed in 1947 with the mission of performing the pageant. They put on dozens of plays in the 1950s and 1960s including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls and Kenneth Horne’s Fools Rush In.[7] The Players are still going today, performing annual pantomimes including Sleeping Beauty this January.[8] The Horbury Pageant Players are an excellent example of how pageantry and its ultimate decline provided a major stimulus to amateur dramatics.
Click on this link to watch a Pathé film about the fuel crisis
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/fuel-crisis-uk
[1] Yorkshire Evening Post, 7 July 1947, 5 and 1 September 1947, 4.
[2] Yorkshire Evening Post, 28 October 1947, 4.
[3] Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 April 1948, 4
[4] Argus, 23 April 1947
[5] Halifax Daily Courier and Guardian, 3 January 1948, 2.
[6] Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 April 1948, 4
[7] Yorkshire Evening Post, 19 November 1953, 8.
[8] Accessed 27 May 2016, http://www.ridingsfm.co.uk/events/calendar/event/1648/