The Mother of all Pageants Pageants were a phenomenon that brought people together long before cinema and TV. Margery Hookings has been looking at a new collections of films and memorabilia that hopes to bring the whole pageant phenomenon to a wider audience.
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magine a massive theatrical event in the romantic ruins of Sherborne Castle, with 900 cast and organisers, an audience of thousands, lavish costumes, orchestra, band, choruses and 50 horses. This was the colourful scene in 1905 when the Sherborne Pageant was staged in front of an awestruck crowd, way before the advent of cinema, television and computers. Today, it’s hard, when entertainment is beamed into your home at the flick of a switch, to understand what this incredible event would have been like. But if you close your eyes you can picture the spectacle. You can almost hear the roar of crowd as the Sherborne Pageant enacts centuries of local history in a colourful and compelling way, the like of which has never been seen before. A large part of the local community was actively involved. No-one was paid. The national newspapers were fascinated, special trains were run from London and 70 extra police were drafted into Sherborne to control the crowds. Back in 1904, the Daily Express described Sherborne as ‘a dull enough place to live in’, bypassed by tourists
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heading for the coast of Cornwall and Devon. But that all changed with the Sherborne Pageant, which has become the Mother of All Pageants. The event made a profit—used to create today’s Pageant Gardens—and set an example which was taken up by communities across Britain and abroad and continued over generations. Back in 2001, Windrose Rural Media Trust (under its former name of Trilith), made a documentary about the story called Mother of All Pageants, which is now available on DVD. It was presented by local historian Gerald Pitman, who was well known around Sherborne. The documentary featured the 1905 film of the Sherborne Pageant. True to the original ideal, many local people took part, a few of whom were actually there in 1905. Fast forward to the present and Windrose is revisiting not just the Sherborne event but pageants across the land. It’s a fascinating story which gives an insight into a craze that brought communities together in the most creative way, recreating events from a town’s past for the benefit of modern audiences.
