Harry Wilding’s Champion Marionette Theatre

Feature Article from ‘The Puppet Master’ Autumn 2007
by Ian Denny


Harry Wilding was one of the Great Marionette Showmen of the Victorian Era. Born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1857, he started out in Show Business at the age of six as an apprentice acrobat in a Circus. Harrys Father had been a marionette showman (the skeleton puppet used in Wildings shows was his Fathers and was his most prized possession) and it was Harrys Father who, concerned for his sons welfare as an acrobat, decided when Harry was thirteen, that he should return to the less injury-prone family business of puppetry and learn the craft of the puppeteer.

To develop his technique, Harry quickly set about advertising his availability as a freelance marionette operator and was taken up by several of the leading Marionette Companies of the day, most notably Cooper, Wycherley & Pettigrove’s Imperial Marionettes, with whom he started work on 45/- a week in 1882 as one of 18 manipulators, rising to Principal Manipulator in 1887 at £5 10s a week. He also worked at various times with the Bullocks’, D’Arc’s, Cassidy’s and Barnard’s Marionettes.

Using all the skills he learned working with other Marionette Troupes, Wilding eventually set up his own Company in 1900, touring with his wife and six sons, all of whom helped with the show and were proudly named in their key roles on the publicity posters. His touring operations at this time were based firstly from High Street, West Bromwich and later from the Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, area.

Wilding’s Marionette Theatre was one of the largest ever toured, reportedly seating up to 700 people. The inside of the marquee had raked seating and the rafters inside were ornamented with fancy scallops. On one side of the proscenium were drums and on the other side, a small pipe organ. These instruments, augmented by a cornet, played by Wilding himself, provided the musical accompaniment.

The stage was illuminated with acetylene lamps, with three or four ceiling lamps for house lights. Heating during the Winter months was provided by coke fires situated in various parts of the marquee, which always had its floor sprinkled with fresh sawdust (yes, it did burn down - three times in fact).

The marionettes were 24” tall, carved in the traditional Victorian fashion with flexible fabric bodies. They were strung on slightly modified two-stick controls, with a back bar shaped for comfortable handling. Performances lasted about two and a half hours and the “People’s Popular Prices” ranged from one penny to the top price of sixpence. Wildings plays were noted for their use of elaborate scenery and effects which mirrored the popularity of such mechanical stage wizardry on the Victorian Stage. One of his productions had a seven-minute transformation scene, complete with gauzes, cut-cloths and a waterfall.

The Wilding Repertoire of plays was vast to the say the least, with ‘Maria Martin’, ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘East Lynne’ being among the more well-known titles from a list of over 40 mostly melodramatic full-length productions which were available, all committed to memory by the Wilding Family. Pantomimes such as ‘Dick Whittington’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ catered for the family audiences along with a selection of traditional variety items such as Chinese Jugglers, a Skeleton, Tightrope Walker, Contortionist etc, along with short comedy sketches.

With such a huge stock of productions to call on, the Wildings could often stay in one area for a considerable length of time, sometimes performing 6 different programmes a week. The Family were once sited in Carr’s Lane, Birmingham for two and a half years without having to move on.

In his long and varied career, Harry Wilding visited almost every country in the world, including France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland and Russia along with almost every Town and City in Britain. He played in the largest theatres and the smallest Villages with equal showmanship and skill.

The beginning of the end for Wilding’s touring days came in 1914, when five of his sons were called up to serve their Country. Harry made an attempt to continue without them, but the productions were too elaborate to be presented without the assistance of his large family and eventually, he was forced to close the show down. As Harry put it in a letter to the “World’s Fair” dated July 24th 1926; “What could I do? Five sons out of six on Active Service and all First Class manipulators.”

He settled, for the last thirty years or so of his life in the Cannock Chase area of Staffordshire, firstly continuing to live in his touring wagons sited in Bradford Street, Hednesford until the Council acquired the land, when he moved into a house three streets away in Moreton Street, Chadsmoor, between Hednesford and Cannock. He ended his working life in the Cannock Chase Coal Mines. All his sons miraculously survived the First World War, with only one - John Wilding - being wounded at the Battle of Loos. However, when they returned from War, public interest in puppetry had waned and the sons only option was to join their Father working in the Coal Mines - the areas main employer.

Harry did return briefly to puppetry in 1933, when he was in his late 70s, assisting his son Bert, who made a valiant attempt to revive the Wildings’ Glory Days by touring some of the more popular items again (mainly variety acts and short sketches) as “Wilding’s Crown Marionette Theatre” for a few years with enormous enthusiasm, great bravura, but sadly limited success. According to his son, Harry continued to make puppets and remained a skilled manipulator into his final years.

In an interview published in the Worlds Fair on 13th October 1934, reflecting on his career, Harry commented; I have made all my own figures for years, painted and designed all my own scenery, written scores of plays and sketches, dressed all my little actors and actresses and played the cornet in my own band.

Harry Wilding died at his home, ‘The Mannikins’ in Moreton Street, Chadsmoor, Staffordshire, in 1941 at the age of 84. Few of his figures are accounted for, but one marionette – “Billy the Big Boots Dancer from Kentucky” who was a staple act in Wilding’s variety routines throughout his career, has been on display for two seasons alongside the Douglas Hayward Puppet Collection at the Staffordshire County Museum, Shugborough Estate near Stafford and briefly at the Museum of Cannock Chase, where it is hoped the marionette will find a permanent home – less than a mile from where Harry Wilding chose to settle for the majority of his life.

If you are interested in more British Old Time Puppeteers see Ian Deny’s puppet archive website at link in RH column -->