The year 1934 does not feature prominently in history books, since very
little happened
which was worthy of note - on the surface, at any rate. King George V was
still on the
throne of a Britain which really was Great, ruling an Empire over which the
sun never set.
There were rumblings in Germany, of course.
Behind the scenes, however, two meetings were held and two new organisations
founded
which were to have a profound effect on the lives of a considerable number
of people,
most of who were as yet unborn. The first of these took place at 8pm in the
evening of
Saturday, 2nd. June, in the front room of Mrs. King's house in Newbiggin
Street, Thaxted,
when representatives of six of the early "revival" teams met to discuss the
feasibility of
forming a federation of Morris Clubs from all over the country, to be known
as the Morris
Ring. It was duly agreed to go ahead, and the Inaugural Meeting was held
at Cecil Sharp
House on September 20th. of that year.
The second of the two significant meetings took place in the barn of
Goodmans Farm in
Tumblefield Road, Stansted - a few hundred yards up the road from the Black
Horse.
Mrs. Ethel Hunt, who was the owner at that time, was a keen folk dancer,
and she had
a small barn standing empty which she thought would make an ideal practice
site.
Accordingly, she invited other interested parties from the Stansted and Fairseat
district to
discuss the formation of a local country dance group, and so it was that
the Fairseat Folk
Dance Society (F.F.D.S.) came into being in the Summer of 1934.
Goodman's Barn and Oast House (reconstructed from a modern
photograph)
If the villagers in remote villages wanted entertainment, they had to
make it for themselves.
Dancing was one obvious solution to the problem, and country dancing was
increasing in
popularity at that time. As a result, folk dance clubs sprang up all over
the place, sometimes
in most unlikely locations. They were run by women, and most of the members
were local
women who knew one another socially through other village activities. Often
they wore a
distinctive Club dress, the Fairseat ladies wore emerald green dresses with
red, yellow &
blue braid on the sleeves and skirt. As we shall see later on, it was this
combination of
four colours which was eventually to determine the kit of the Stansted Morris
Men.
On practice nights, any men present wore ordinary clothes, but for parties
and special
events white shirts, trousers and socks were the norm, with the inevitable
white plimsolls!
The backbone of these early folk dance clubs was always provided by
the local village
women, but there were occasional visitors - mainly from nearby towns where
folk dance
clubs, if they existed at all, tended to be rather formal and academic, lacking
the
spontaneous gaiety of the village groups.. One of the F.F.D.S regular visitors
was a
Mr. H. Bentley Thorne, an experienced Morris Man who was a member of Douglas
Kennedy's
E.F.D.S.S. display side. He lived at Bromley, which really was in Kent at
that time.
In the Autumn of 1934 he met some of the younger men of the village
at a country dance
party given by Mr. & Mrs. Hunt in Goodmans Barn, and persuaded them to
take up the
Morris. Mrs. Hunt willingly offered the use of the oast house which was adjacent
to the
barn for this purpose and so the Stansted Morris Men came to be formed in
the Winter
of 1934/5. One or two older men helped to complete the side. Practices were
held every
week in the Goodmans Farm Oast House, and once a month Mr. Thorne would make
the somewhat arduous journey from Bromley to teach them new dances. In the
intervening
weeks, the men would practice the dances they had learnt to date under the
Foremanship
of Stanley Chapman, the verger of Stansted Church.
They concentrated on the Adderbury
and Headington Quarry traditions, and
occasionally performed Quarry jigs in
massed display form. By the end of
the following Summer such good
progress had been made that on a
Saturday afternoon in September the
Club was able to undertake a tour
round the neighbouring villages.
Stansted Morris Dancing in Wrotham
Square |
 |
When Mr. Thorne visited Stansted, he would usually bring his own musician
with him, an
E.F.D.S.S. violinist named Willy Ganiford. He was an excellent musician,
but not really
a Morris "fiddler". For special events and on day tours the pair of them
would accompany
the Stansted Men, but on all other occasions the music was provided by their
own
musician, Robert Dixon, who played the fiddle.
Their kit consisted of white shirts,
trousers & shoes and green
baldricks with a red & yellow
rosette in the middle. The bell
pads had the green, red, yellow
& blue colours of the F.F.D.S.
and they wore no hats.
The Stansted bell pads modeled
here by a man in Hartley shoes
are from the Percy Sephton
collection
Since the Club was an integral
part of the F.F.D.S. it had no
finances of its own, and therefore
had no need of a Bagman. |
 |
The activities of the side were limited mainly to local fetes and shows,
and to public displays
in conjunction with the F.F.D.S. at various functions organised by the E.F.D.S.S.
These
were held fairly regularly during the summer months at such places as Allington
Castle
and Tonbridge Castle Lawns. On these occasions the whole Club would be
transported
in the back of a lorry driven by a Mrs. Butcher, whose father owned a transport
firm in
Wrotham. The side would also occasionally go on tour by themselves around
nearby
villages, but not basing their stands on the local pubs as Hartley do
today.
They were encouraged by Mr. Thorne to take an active interest in Morris
Ring events. The
Club regularly attended the various London gatherings. They applied for full
Ring
membership in 1936 and were formally admitted at a meeting held at Cecil
Sharp House
on March 13th. 1937, together with Cheltenham and Springhead. Thereby bringing
the total
number of Member Clubs at that time up to 28.
Two years later, however, the outbreak of the second World War put an
end to the Stansted
Morris Men's activities, as it did to almost all Men's Sides throughout the
country.
The changed circumstances after the war made it impractical for it to
re-form.
____________________________________________________________________
During the four years of its active existence, men known to have danced
with the Stansted
Morris Men include, |
