Bledington - Morris Dancing

Morris Dancing

It is more than 100 years since the continuum of Morris dancing in the Bledington region came to an end. We cannot be certain of the exact date as the final appearances of the men were sporadic.

Charles Benfield ensured a link which touched almost four generations of dancers and his enduring enthusiasm eventually enabled the dances to be recorded by Cecil Sharp and later demonstrated and refined by the Travelling Morrice.

The Bledington area is rich in Morris history, one of the earliest recorded events being a paid performance by Morris dancers at a private house in Sherborne, eight miles away, at Whitsun in 1711. Another recorded event took place in Churchill in 1721 three miles to the north-east of Bledington when a Morris team (probably local) were paid six shillings for dancing at a Whitsun Ale. There is also evidence that sides were active in Rissington, Icomb and Milton all within four miles of Bledington, in the late 1700s.

No recorded incidents of Morris dancing in Bledington itself exist before the mid-19th Century, when a side from Bledington were remembered as having danced at Bledington and nearby Fifield. The dances performed by sides from Idbury and Fifield were described to Sharp as being essentially the same as those at Bledington and there was sufficient similarity to the Longborough dances (taught by Henry Taylor) for men from these villages to dance as one set in 1887. As far as revealed by the records the style we know as Bledington probably first entered the records with John Lainchbury, a farm labourer from Rissington. He was the senior member of the set dancing in Idbury between 1850 and 1870, but the existence of an earlier side has been implied by a local historian.

Charles Benfield began playing the pipe and tabour for the Morris in the 1850s and 'inherited' the instruments from the renowned Sherborne and Northleach musician Jim 'the laddie' Simpson, who died from an overdose of alcohol in 1856. He eventually went on to become a key character in the local Morris playing for Milton-under-Wychwood, Idbury, Fyfield and Longborough. By the early 1880s, Benfield eventually led what became known as the junior side comprising dancers born in the 1860s. These included men like George Hathaway, Lewis Hall, William Roberts and the Kerry (Carey) brothers, who were able to pass on their knowledge to the Travelling Morrice when they visited Bledington in the 1930s. By the late 1880s Benfield found it difficult to maintain a complete side and dancing continued sporadically until the late 1890s

Some of the Bledington dancers were very colourful characters. George Hathaway believed that 'you couldn't dance unless you were three part...'. They toured with other sides like Longborough and Lower Swell, and there is an interesting description of Fools 'competing' having a breath holding competition with their heads in a rain barrel.

Some 25 Bledington dances have been collected, all but two with handkerchiefs.