Ludlow: The Pageant is free until December

Costumes that once helped turn Ludlow Castle into a stage for more than 1,500 years of Shropshire history are on display again. Ludlow: The Pageant brings together surviving clothing, memorabilia and original film from the town’s large-scale celebrations of 1934.

The free exhibition is open to the general public at Shropshire Museums’ Collections Centre, Lower Gallery, in Ludlow. It runs until Friday 18 December 2026, with donations welcome. Doors open at 9.30am on each exhibition day.

Shropshire Museums has assembled the display around the Shropshire Historical Pageant and the Comus Tercentenary celebrations. The programme marked 300 years since the performance of John Milton’s Comus at Ludlow Castle.

Original costumes and film return to public view

Visitors can see colourful costumes worn during the 1934 theatrical performances, alongside surviving programmes and other ephemera from the celebrations. Original footage shows the pageant taking place at Ludlow Castle and provides a direct record of its scale.

The exhibition also traces the community effort behind the production. Local participants appeared in historical dress during a parade through the castle, representing different periods in Shropshire’s past.

More than 2,000 costumes were created for the pageant, which involved hundreds of performers. Participants ranged from prominent local figures to schoolchildren, reflecting how widely the production drew on communities across the county.

The spectacle ran for six days during the summer of 1934. Around 4,000 people attended each day, with visitors travelling from elsewhere in Britain and beyond.

Why Comus has a particular link to Ludlow

Milton wrote Comus in 1634 for a performance at Ludlow Castle. The work is a masque, a historical form combining drama and music, and is regarded as one of the poet’s significant early works.

Three centuries later, the anniversary became the focus of an ambitious retelling of local history. The resulting pageant connected the Milton work with stories spanning more than 1,500 years of Shropshire’s past.

Alex Wagner, Shropshire Council’s portfolio holder for culture, said the surviving material provides a glimpse of both the scale of the production and the community effort behind it. The exhibition presents that evidence through objects worn and collected at the time, supplemented by film of the performances themselves.

Opening days and admission details

Ludlow: The Pageant can be visited from 9.30am to 5pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Saturday opening hours are 9.30am to 1pm. The Collections Centre is closed on Thursdays.

Admission is free and visitors may leave a donation. The supplied event information does not list a booking requirement, transport guidance or accessibility arrangements. The final scheduled day is Friday 18 December 2026 at Shropshire Museums’ Collections Centre, Lower Gallery, Ludlow.

Source: Shropshire Council Newsroom