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Entertaining the community: the evolution of civic ritual and public celebration, 1860–1953

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2016

BEN ROBERTS Open the ORCID record for BEN ROBERTS [Opens in a new window]
BEN ROBERTS*
Affiliation:
Teesside University, School of Arts and Media, Borough Road, Middlesbrough, Tees Valley, TS1 3BA, UK
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Abstract:

Civic ritual and pageantry have been mainstays of urban culture since the Middle Ages, but it has been suggested that they entered a period of decline from the 1870s onwards. This article suggests that instead, local authorities reformed and revised their use of civic ceremony, celebration and commemoration, in order to keep pace with contemporary culture and to maintain public interest. The towns of Darlington and Middlesbrough are considered to highlight the use of recreational and sensory-rich ritual in the urban setting. It is suggested that historians should therefore adopt a broader methodology and broaden their definition of what constituted civic ritual in the twentieth century.

Type
Special section: Communities, courts and Scottish towns
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 444 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 My thanks go to Tom Hulme for his thoughts on an early draft of this article, along with Shane Ewen and the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful guidance.

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72 NEDG, 8 May 1937.

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