So too, does an eye-witness's account of a Chester performance where the plays took place yearly on three days, beginning with Whit Monday.

"The manner of these plays were, every company had his pageant or part, a high scaffold with two rooms, a higher and a lower, upon four wheels.

In the lower they apparelled themselves and in the higher room they played, being all open on the top that all beholders might hear and see them.
They began first at the abbey gates, and when the first pageant was played, it was wheeled to the high cross before the mayor and so to every street.

So every street had a pageant playing upon it at one time, till all the pageants for the day appointed were played." The "companies" were the town guilds and the several "pageants" different scenes in Old or New Testament story.

As far as was possible each company took for its pageant some Bible story fitting to its trade; in York the goldsmiths played the three Kings of the East bringing precious gifts, the fishmongers the flood, and the shipwrights the building of Noah's ark.