The Morris Ring

The Morris Ring celebrated its 75th Anniversary in 2009 so that a list of our previous Meetings was overdue. Such a list did not exist - except in fragments: with Keith Francis holding some as Keeper of the Log; John Frearson, our previous Bagman, in the form of an Excel workbook; and most of the rest of the information in the Morris Ring Log books held by our Archivist, Chris Metherell. Matters were complicated by our (then) Treasurer, Steve Adamson, suffering a disastrous house fire back in 2001.

Chris has used John Frearson's spreadsheet to prepare a more complete list {meetings until 2004, number 300}, and this is available on-line. Of Past Morris Ring Meetings Chris says the following:

The Web list below, produced from the Excel workbook, shows the Morris Ring Meetings according to the organising morris club, but also, and where necessary, shows the site for the meeting in brackets {}, and other notes. Please consult the above online Excel file for definitive information. Some precise dates are missing and we welcome contributions, comments, errors, etc., these should be reported to the manchestermorrismen [at] ntlworld [dot] com (WebEditor)

27th Oct 2006: Some corrections, thanks to the late John Price of St Albans MM, who pointed out:

Yes, Chris Metherell's Excel file reports the date as the Saturday, but this web version uses Friday to Sunday for recent meetings. The first log used Friday to Sunday, then w/e, and there were also single day meetings.

In 1935, the Earliest Morris Ring Directory listed fourteen clubs. Between 1935 and 1940 The Morris Ring held 18 more meetings; Thaxted MM hosted five of these, the rest were organised by various individuals under the auspices of the Morris Ring.

After the 19th Meeting clubs found increasing difficulties in arranging a Morris Ring Meeting due to the 1939/45 war, However, a number of clubs, for example Oxford MM with their May Day celebrations, did manage some dancing during the war, but there were no Morris Ring Meetings. The meetings started again in 1946. In the list below, where a morris side organises the meeting, this is shown as the first entry, where there is no 'organising side', the name of the place where the meeting was held is given.