Morris dancers outside the George & Dragon

Photograph by Michael Cooper showing Morris Dancers in Church View with names
2004

Photograph from Michael Cooper showing Dancers in Church View in 2004. with names

Photograph of Curruthers Twins as Morris Dancers

Dancers at Church Gate House 1973

Photo of Francis Shergold and Bob Allison described as a lovely man he was the
Cake bearer 1962-1989. Died 1994.

Sam Bennett born (1865-1951) from Ilmington, a frequent dancer and musician in Bampton, this photo dated 1920
Sam had the distinction of being called “a rotter” by Cecil Sharp. He was responsible for reviving the Morris tradition in the Warwickshire village of Ilmington. Although a fiddle player himself, he learned the tunes from a local pipe and tabor player, Tom Foster, who “no longer had enough teeth to hold the pipe in place” In the process of reviving the dances, Bennett did some improving and inventing along the way. To Sharp, this was inexcusable meddling; what he most treasured about traditional dance was that is was supposedly not the work of individual creativity, but of centuries of continuous evolution by the common, preferably uneducated people. Bennett was recorded in 1933 by a Harvard academic, James Madison Carpenter. Being a self-taught fiddler, and having learned his tunes directly from a piper, it is little wonder that his playing, though very rhythmic, was plain and unadorned except with frequent open-string drones.

Black and white photo of Morris dancers taken on 6th June 1927
left to right Tanner snr. Billy Flux, E Lay, Hudson. Bertie Hunt, Freddie Tanner, (written on back)

Black and white photo of Morris dancers taken on in 1934
Jingy Wells on fiddle, George 'Punch' Smith, Reg Whitlock Dancer