Leicester Morrismen

Who are we?

A group of like-minded guys who perform the Morris in and around Leicestershire – and sometimes further afield. We claim to have danced in every village and town of our home county over the years, come rain or shine, even on ice and snow. We enjoy keeping the tradition alive, bringing a smile to our audience’s faces, and raising money for our pet charities.

We have members ranging from their twenties to eighties, and are quite happy to extend that range if the right fellows turn up!

What do we do?

We dance both Cotswold Morris – the sort with straw hats and white clothes, usually done in Summer; and Border Morris – the Winter variety, danced in ragcoats, top hats and with red faces – for which we turn ourselves into Red Leicester. We are a traditional side, doing dances which have been handed down the years, rather than feeling any need to make up new ones. And we’re convinced we do it rather well!

We start the Summer season at 7.00 am on the first of May up at Old John in Bradgate Park, with an hour’s performance. We always get a great audience – come along and join them! Then we are out and about dancing at two or three spots every Wednesday evening through to late August, as well as many weekends – see our tour list for all the details. The Winter sessions are fewer but always include a long lunchtime session on Boxing Day and a visit to the Straw Bear Festival in January.

When did it all start?

Well, the truth is that nobody actually knows! People always take their customs for granted and centuries ago why would anyone bother to write anything down about their local Morris dancers? We do know that in Shakespeare’s day the Morris was certainly an accepted part of life as he mentions it in one of his plays. The earliest written reference to Morris locally is in the court records of 1599. A group of men were hauled up before Leicester magistrates for dancing in the wrong place at the wrong time – Whitsun, as it happens – and were punished for their sins. They clearly did not learn the lesson and the same thing happened again in 1603, and they were duly summoned to appear once more.

The Morris then dropped out of sight locally for quite a while, and the next recorded mention is in the last decade of the 19th-century, when dances with sticks were seen in Market Bosworth and other parts of west Leicestershire.

In the 1920s a side of dancers was performing Cotswold Morris in Leicester, and the current side were in touch with one of them, Eric Swift, until his death some years ago. Fortunately he was very encouraging, though it was a humbling feeling to be watched by a man who was dancing before most of us were born.

The present Leicester Morris men were formed in 1953, and the initially met just to learn the dances, with an occasional demonstration. In 1957 Steve George organized the first summer season of "dancing out", and the side has never looked back.

Why do we do it?

Because it’s fun! We get out and about, meet people, have a beer or two, keep fit and make other people happy. It’s a great antidote to the stresses of modern living.

And we are keeping alive part of our heritage.

How do we learn the dances?

After the end of the Summer season we meet every Wednesday evening at St Stephen’s Church Hall in Leicester. There we spend a couple of hours practising the dances. The more experienced men teach the others and even though some of us have been doing the Morris for years there are always some dances we’ve never done, or some variants to try. New members are always welcome – you bring the enthusiasm and we’ll do the rest!