In the pages which follow there will be found a short account of many of the forty-three Clubs which have been admitted to association in the Ring. The date after each title is that of the Club's admission. The names at the end of each section are those of the dancers who either wrote the account or supplied the information from which it has been compiled. I am very grateful to all those who have made this interesting record possible.
The Ring has the honour to count among its associated Clubs the two famous sides of Abingdon and Bampton. As is well known, the Bampton side has been dancing continuously from time immemorial, and for over fifty years has had the incomparable inspiration of William Wells, first as Fool and later as Fiddler. Whit Monday at Bampton is a day known to Morris men all over the world. The Abingdon side has had times of inactivity but with the encouragement of Kenworthy Schofield and Francis Fryer has got together on various occasions, and gave a fine performance at the Ring meeting at Stow-on-the-Wold in September 1938, at which Miss Mary Neal was present.
In 1933 Walter Faires, a master at Balgowan School, Beckenham, introduced the Morris to a few of the senior pupils. The happy memories of the Morris which these boys had on leaving the School enabled him to form the Balgowan Old Boys Morris and Sword Dance Club, which was formally established on December 14th 1937, Peter Paddon being Squire, Dennis Harding Bagman, and Walter Faires instructor. The following March (1938) the Club became associated in the Ring, and most of the side attended the spring meeting at Thaxted in June. When Jack Putterill left Thaxted to be Vicar of St Andrew's, Plaistow, a mixed side of Balgowan and Morley College men (Walter Faires being also an active member of the latter Club) visited the parish to dance in the streets and at the Greengate Tavern, and also on the stage of the Greengate Cinema, for the benefit of the church funds. Numerous displays were given during the spring of 1939, and the Club attended the Ring meeting at Cecil Sharp House. In May the Men joined the East Surrey Morris for a day's tour of the villages around Godstone. Later in the summer the Club, together with a boy's team from Balgowan School, danced the Morris in an open-air festival at Herne Hill; the Club also visited Aylesford, Kent, where they presented the Kentish Hooden Horse, a ceremony which had not been presented since 1900. All members of the Balgowan Morris served in the War, the Squire and Bagman spending some time in a German P.o.W. camp. They and Walter Faires attended the Ring meeting in March 1946, but it proved impossible to get the side together again, and the remaining members were absorbed into the new Ravensbourne Club, founded during the winter of 1946-7, into whose possession the Hooden Horse passed, and was used at the Albert Hall Anglo-French Festival in January 1949. (D.H.Harding)