At the heart of Pilton Green Man Day in Pilton, Barnstaple, held annually on the third Saturday in July, is the Green Man Pageant, a dramatic street play that retells a medieval legend. In earlier Pilton Green Man Days, then known as Pilton Festival, the pageant performance took place in the centre of Pilton Street. It then moved to the gardens of Pilton House and now takes place in Rotary Gardens. It is performed twice during the day at 12 noon and 3.00pm.
It follows the confrontation between the Green Man (an ancient pagan symbol of nature, fertility, and rebirth) and the Prior (representing the Church). The story re-enacts how the Christian Church ultimately absorbed ancient beliefs into its own ideology.
The play concludes with the two figures meeting and the Green Man being successfully incorporated into the church. It is often linked to the historic Green Man foliage carving inside Pilton’s St Mary the Virgin Church.
This film is a recording by one camera of the 2019 Pageant, simply as a record.