| Alice Buckton | |
| Birth Date: | 9 March 1867 |
| Birth Place: | Haslemere, Surrey, England |
| Death Place: | Wells, Somerset, England |
| Father: | George Bowdler Buckton |
| Partner: | Annet Schepel |
Alice Mary Buckton (9 March 1867 – 10 December 1944) was an English educator, poet, community playwright, feminist and mystic.
In 1899 Buckton established a Froebelian educational institution, Sesame House, in London. Her mystery play Eager Heart, first performed in 1903, was the first of several pageant plays written or stage-managed by Buckton. A convert to the Baháʼí Faith, she recited an ode to open the 1911 First Universal Races Congress. After buying the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, she established it as a hostel in Glastonbury, helping to establish Glastonbury as a site of pilgrimage.[1]
Alice Buckton was born in Weycombe, Haslemere, on 9 March 1867.[2] She was the eldest of seven daughters of the entomologist George Bowdler Buckton,[3] and his wife Mary Ann Odling.[4] She came to know Alfred Tennyson, who lived nearby, and years later still wore a cloak given her by Tennyson.[3]
As a young woman Alice Buckton was involved with the Women's University Settlement which grew out of the work of Octavia Hill.[5] [6] She then became interested in the educational ideas of Friedrich Fröbel,[1] and traveled to Germany to visit the Pestalozzi-Fröbel House. She managed to persuade the Principal there, Annet Schepel, to come to England and help set up a similar institution in London, the Sesame Garden and House for Home Life Training in St John's Wood.[5] In an 1898 lecture Buckton outlined a plan for this new institution.[7] Buckton emphasised the importance of motherhood in the thought of Pestalozzi and Fröbel, and declared the kindergarten to be part of the "woman's movement".[8] Sesame House opened in 1899, with Patrick Geddes on the committee.[3] One woman trained at Sesame House was Lileen Hardy, who went on to open the free kindergarten St. Saviour's Child Garden in Edinburgh.[9] By 1902 the school at Sesame House had sixty-five students.[10] Buckton and Schepel were partners who lived together until Schepel's death in 1931.[2] [5]
In 1901 Buckton published her first poetry collection, Through Human Eyes. Verse from the collection was later set to music by Gustav Holst as The heart worships.[11]
Buckton's mystery play Eager Heart was first performed in Lincoln's Inn Hall in 1903.[12] The play was an immediate success. Three decades later there had been hundreds of performances and over 41,000 published copies of the play sold.[13]
In 1908 Buckton became drawn to the Baháʼí Faith after meeting Wellesley Tudor Pole.[14]
Buckton attended the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911,[15] opening proceedings with an 'Ode of Salutation' from Europe, alongside T. Ramakrishna Pillai speaking for the East and W. E. B. DuBois speaking for Africa.[16]
Buckton met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá several times and accompanied him on his speaking tour of England in 1913.[17]
In 1912 Buckton bought the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.[18] She and Schepel opened a hostel there which drew pilgrims from around the world, and Buckton continued to live in Glastonbury for the rest of her life.
In August 1913 Buckton stage-managed Caroline Cannon's Pageant of Gwent at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.[19] The following year she supported an Arthurian festival at Glastonbury, centered around the performance of a music drama by Reginald Buckley, 'The Birth of Arthur'.[20] She herself wrote and produced The Coming of Bride, first performed in Glastonbury on 6 August 1914.[19] The Coming of the Dawn was written to be produced at Christmas 1918 by the YWCA.[21] thumb|A scene from her 1922 filmIn 1919 Buckton spoke at a Leisure of the People Conference in Manchester, describing the way in which everyday people in Glastonbury threw themselves into performance of pageant plays. As a result, the University Settlement organized a May festival in Ancoats, for which Buckton wrote an allegorical play around the figures of Labour, Beauty and Joy.[22]
In 1922 she led a team who created the 68 minute film "Glastonbury past and Present". The film was said to the first about the history of a town.[23]
In 1925 she wrote a series of six radio sketches based on the Arthurian legends, performed by the Cardiff Station Radio Players with music by Warwick Braithwaite.[24]
In 1938 she received a civil list pension "in recognition of her services to literature and of the services rendered by her father".[25]
Buckton died on 10 December 1944 at the home of a friend in Vicars' Close, Wells, Somerset.[2]