Dartington Morris Men hosted a National Morris Ring event on 5 to 7 September 2008.

In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of their formation at Dartington Hall in 1968, the Dartington Morris Men hosted a national Meeting of the Morris Ring, centred in Totnes, over the weekend Friday 5th to Sunday 7th September. This coincided nicely with the first weekend of the Totnes Festival .

Sixteen Morris Sides from across England were the guests of Dartington Morris Men for the 316th Meeting of the Morris Ring organisation, providing a lively weekend of dance, music and song.

The detailed programme taken from our weekend printed programe gives more detail on  a single A4 page (it's a PDF document).

On Saturday 6th, six separate Tours left Totnes around 9.30am, and visited the South Hams, Dartmoor, Teignbridge and Torbay, where public displays of dancing took place in many towns and villages throughout the day. More detail...

On the morning of Sunday 7th, a grand procession, involving over 200 Morris Men, left The Plains, to arrive at St Mary's Church for a special Service at 10.30am, which included the rare spectacle of a dance performance inside the Church. More detail...

This was followed by a Mass Display from all the participating teams, in the Square adjoining the Civic Hall. Individual 'show' dances were performed by our visitors, introduced by the outgoing Squire of the Morris Ring, Paul Reece of Thaxted Morris Men.

Change of Squire of the Morris Ring

The weekend also saw the two-yearly changover of the Squire of the Morris Ring, which was marked by the old Squire (Paul Reece of Thaxted Morris) dancing out (see video here), and the new Squire (Brian Tasker of Hartley Morris Men & Castleford Longsword) dancing in (see video here).

Morris Ring Meetings

Every year since 1934 with just a few exceptions*, meetings have been held by Morris sides that are members of the Morris Ring. This normally involves many sides getting together and dancing in public to live music played by the Morris musicians. And as you might expect, there is often a good deal of music and song in the nearby pubs as the Morris men sample the local ales.

The Morris Ring was founded in the 1930s and is an association of men’s Morris clubs, concerned with maintaining the tradition and performances of the Morris in its various forms, and bringing it to a wider audience.

 

* the only exceptions were during the Second World War

 

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