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A Pageant of the Great Forest of Rockingham

There are copies of this rare mimeographed publication in Kettering Public Library (seen - incomplete), Corby Library (not seen) and Northampton Central Library (seen). Carr wrote a Preface to explain it:

I was delighted to find myself with the job of writing a pageant for a performance under the walls of Rockingham Castle: I had supposed pageants, like magic-lantern shows, to have been stuffed into the limbo of pre-war delights.

At Castleford Secondary School pageants were meat and drink to us. Each summer our headmaster – he was Henry Moore’s headmaster too, there – that remarkable man, Thomas Dawes, arranged really massive shows, fleets of Danes in camouflaged barges on the filthy canal, herds of boys, miners and masters mounted on carthorses, an annual day to remember in a town only memorable for its ugliness. Time ….. ‘Even such is time that takes in trust/ Our youth, our hopes, our all we have/ And pays us but with Earth and Dust….’

J.L. Carr, 27 Mill Dale Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire, June 1st 1964

(Last updated on 28/5/2021)

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Front cover

Content: The copy described here was seen at Northamptonshire County Library. It consists of 30 sheets bound with staples with a rear cover of yellow card; the copy in Kettering only has 26 sheets, so some are missing.

P1. Title page;

P2. Preface, signed and dated by Carr June 1st 1964;

P3. Bronze age mirror found at Desborough drawn in green and purple;

P4. A funeral party approaches from a distance (2 cols);

P5. Woman’s voice; man’s voice;

P6. Drawing in green and purple entitled ‘How the west was won’;

P7. The most elegant survival of a village is usually its name;

P8. A trip to Jerusalem. Drawing in green and purple of knights on horses based on the chancel arch at Wakerley Parish Church.

P9. The Wakerley carved stone capital;

P10. Drawing in green and purple entitled ‘King, Bishops & Knights’;

P11. In ‘Anselm & his biographer’ Professor Southern calls the Council...;

P12. Commentator;

P13. But keep that in mind – a game.;

P14. Two cols: The King, The Archbishop etc;

P15. Two cols: Bishops, Knights, Commentator;

P16. Two cols: Anselm, Durham, Bishops...;

P17. Two cols: Durham, Commentator...;

P18. Two cols: The King, Durham, Anselm...;

P19. Two cols: Bishops, Knights...;

P20. 1 col. Commentator;

P21. Blank page;

P22. Shield in green, purple arrow. Fair stood the wind for France;

P23. Two cols: Commentators. Verse choir;

P24. Drawing in green and purple. Other times but same people.

P25. Two cols: Commentator,1st voices, 2nd voices

P26. Two cols: Part of King’s College Chapel;

P27. Two cols: Opinion. Can I hear it?

P28. Two cols: Green. TV. SM. TM

P29. Two cols: Green and purple. TV. Commentators

P30. Blank page.

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