The Spirit of the Past: When a Carthusian Ruin Became a 1,500-Person Stage

In 1927, the quiet ruins of Mount Grace Priory got a shock. For three days they were dragged out of their peaceful retirement and dressed up in the “forgotten pomp and ceremony” of a proper Roaring Twenties do. Grief did it. Lady Florence Bell had lost two heirs in 1926, and the Historic Pageant of Mount Grace was her way of grieving out loud, in costume, with a cast of thousands. To pay for it, she sold her beloved Dickens collection, books and letters and all. That is not a small thing to give up for a weekend of theatre.

Here is some archive footage of the pageant.

Edith Craig, a pioneer of feminist theatre, directed the whole affair, and she did not do it by halves. 1,500 performers turned up, and it was, by all accounts, a proper “fascinating hodgepodge”: cabinet ministers standing shoulder to shoulder with dairy workers, all mingling with monks who were meant to look suitably ghostly. Elizabeth Robins opened proceedings as “The Spirit of the Past,” ushering everyone from the founding of the Carthusian order in the 14th century right through to its suppression.

The medieval spell held up well, though not perfectly. Critics at the time complained that broad North Country accents kept “spoiling the illusion,” and one poor soul playing a silent monk was caught mid-performance chatting about Manchester football while puffing on a pipe. The whole thing lost over £800, which was no small sum in 1927, but it did what it set out to do. It proved the “Oneness of the Past with the Present,” and drew a line between the Bells’ grimy industrial empire in Middlesbrough and the gentle idyll of their country estate.

Sources

• “Memories of Mount Grace Priory Pageant revived by historian.” The Northern Echo, 3 Sept. 2018, https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/16685676.memories-mount-grace-priory-pageant-revived-historian/.
• Warwick, Tosh. “The Historic Pageant of Mount Grace Priory (1927).” The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/featured-pageants/historic-pageant-mount-grace-priory-1927/.