Pageant of Mount Grace

A fascinating hodgepodge of a historical pageant is performed in the grounds of Mount Grace, the Carthusian priory in North Yorkshire. This 1927 pageant, overseen here by the then owners of the priory Sir Hugh Bell and Lady Bell, reflects the recent influence of Cecil Sharp in reviving folk customs, as we see a Jack-in-the-Green among the jesters, country dancers and acrobats, rubbing shoulders with royalty in courtly scenes and ascetic medieval monks.

Mount Grace is described by the National Trust, who own it, as being England's most important and best preserved Carthusian priory, otherwise known as a Charterhouse. As part of a trend of Victorian gentrification, the priory came into the hands of local iron industrialist Sir Lowthian Bell in 1898. The priory dates back to just after the Black Death, one of the last monasteries to be established in Yorkshire and the last to be supressed by the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, in December 1539. It was gifted to the National Trust in 1953 and later placed under the care of English Heritage. Sir Hugh Bell died several years after this film in 1931, a year after the death of his wife, Dame Eleanore Bell.