People69App4

Appendix 4  More biographical details of some of the ‘outsiders’ of the 50s and 60s

 

Francis Fryer

Major Francis Fryer was a prominent member of the Berkshire EFDSS (English Folk Dance & Song Society) and after he moved from Newbury to Wargrave Hall in 1933 he founded the Wargrave Morris Men, which included some of his employees.  He hosted an early meeting of the Morris Ring at his home Wargrave Hall in September 1936 and on the Saturday there was a dancing tour to nearby towns, including Abingdon, where they met Henry Hemmings and his son Percy.  On 31st October, Fryer and Kenworthy Schofield (a Cambridge morris man and folk collector) visited Abingdon and met Jim, Henry & Tom Hemmings to learn more about Abingdon morris.  After Abingdon morris had paraded in the town pageant and procession on Coronation Day 12th May 1937, Major Fryer invited the Abingdon team to perform at Wargrave Hall as part of a country dance party on 29th May 1937.  Although there had been informal practices before that, this was the start of the public appearances of Abingdon morris in the 1930s.  Major Fryer was invited to be the sixth dancer for the Mayor’s Day dancing in June 1937, and was a few days later made President of the team.  One of the first things he did after becoming involved with Abingdon was to have the mace (mazer, or cup) repaired by a silversmith in London.  He was active in arranging ‘out of town’ events for Abingdon in the period up to 1939 and he attended Abingdon morris practices when he could.  He did not play the music for Abingdon morris much during the 1930s but he did play the music for Wargrave morris at this time, mostly on pipe and tabor.  Fryer taught some of the Abingdon dances to Wargrave, which meant that they could help to make up numbers in the Abingdon team if needed.  He also played for the newly-formed Oxford Morris Men (forerunners of Oxford City) at Oxford May Morning 1939.

When World War II broke out, Fryer returned to full time military duty.  His first known contact with Abingdon morris after the war appears to be that he presented the team with a copy of the Esperance Morris Book which has a handwritten dedication “Presented to the Abingdon Morris Dancers by F.E. Fryer, 5th Aug 1948”.  As Abingdon morris resumed in 1949, starting with Mayor’s Day dancing on 25th June, Fryer became the main musician for Abingdon, now playing a melodeon as his asthma no longer allowed him to play a pipe.  He last played for Abingdon in 1957, and since 1955 Len Bardwell had played for Abingdon more and more.  In the 1950s, Fryer’s shooting brake, driven by his chauffeur Bill Kent, often provided the transport for the team’s events outside of Abingdon.  The ‘brake’ was a converted Bedford, originally modified to transport Wargrave cricket team.  The Horns, which were often kept at Wargrave Hall in the 50s, were transported in the brake in a long wooden box and the dancers would sit on the side benches with their floral hats on the box: they were more than once mistaken for a hearse on its way to a funeral.  Major Fryer would often help out Abingdon morris with a financial contribution, starting with bailing out the 1952 Abingdon Morris Ring Meeting to the tune of £17 (which was quite a lot of money in those days), and continuing right up to just before his death in January 1961. 

Francis Edward Fryer was born in Bayswater around 1888 and in 1901 was at boarding school in Cheltenham.  In 1911, aged 23, he was serving as a Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery in Port Royal, Jamaica. During the First World War he was a Captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery, later attached to the Royal Air Force. [The RGA were the ‘technical’ branch of the Royal Artillery,  originally established to man the guns of the British Empire’s forts and fortresses, and heavily involved in  the First World War.  It was absorbed into the Royal Artillery in 1924.]  After the war, he continued to serve as a Major, and in a letter dated 2nd June 1937 to Kenworthy Schofield he still seems to be commuting to Woolwich Arsenal (“I have a day off from the Arsenal today not to go to the Derby, but to go out demonstrating with the Berks Team – a prospect which pleases me much more.  Two shows to give this afternoon including a little morris.”).  However in a letter dated 29th June 1937 he is minded to retire (“These interesting developments are making me think I will retire from Inspection again soon, so as to get on with Morris research.  The pay is nothing much to tempt me to stay, and two hours travelling a day each way are getting rather a bore.”).  In a letter to Mary Neal dated 1st March 1938: he says “If I were more the conventional military type perhaps I should not be so keen on folk-dancing.”.  As well as being a leading member of Berkshire EFDSS and Wargrave morris, he also during the 1930s trained local schoolchildren to dance both the morris and country dancing including the girls of Wargrave Piggott school who won junior and senior national awards.

On Thursday 26th January 1961 Major Francis Fryer died after a long illness aged 73.  He was cremated the next day – the only time possible without a long delay. 

References

  • Material in ATMD archives and history, diaries etc
  • Searches of the database in familysearch.org
  • The Kennet Morris Men – A Foolish History http://www.kennetmorrismen.co.uk/our-history.php by Peter de Courcy
  • Letters from F Fryer to Kenworthy Schofield 1937 (copies kindly supplied by Jonathan Leach)
  • Material in the Vaughan Williams Library online archive https://www.vwml.org/projects/vwml-the-full-english  
  • Interview of Slim Mooring, 1985, J Leach and K Chandler, transcript kindly supplied by Jonathan Leach

 

Len Bardwell

Len Bardwell was already an experienced morris dancer (and country dancer) when he first made contact with Abingdon in 1937, attending the August Bank Holiday show and Feast in the Railway Inn afterwards.  Until World War 2 broke out in 1939, he was bagman of East Surrey MM and also a member of Greensleeves MM.  In 1945 he retired and came to live in Harwell (1 Abbey Timbers) and within a year had made contact with the folk dancing scene in Oxford.  An old East Surrey friend of his, R.H. Ludman, had moved to Oxford and introduced him to Oxford Morris Men, who had formed in April 1938 and joined the Ring in March 1939.  In 1946 Oxford Morris Men (OMM) asked him to be their bagman which he formally became in 1947.  In 1949 he played his concertina for the Oxford May Morning dancing alongside William Kimber.  By 1951 Len was both Squire and Bagman of OMM, but the precise date of him becoming Squire is not known.  He organised the 1951 Festival of Britain Ring Meeting in Oxford, assisted by Peter Lund.  Around that time OMM lost most of its membership, either to the newly-reformed Oxford University MM or to Headington Quarry who had also recently started up again.  By 1953, OMM had just three members left, Len, Les Argyle and Ron Ludman who was in ill health and about to give up dancing, and the side ceased to be active.  Between 1953 and 1957 Len conitnued to be Squire and Bagman of now defunct OMM, paying its Ring subscription out of funds left over from active years, and dancing a solo jig in their colours every May Morning.  Because of this the formation of Oxford City MM in 1957 was much easier administratively, but “for four years Len Bardwell  was Oxford Morris Men” (quoting Mike Heaney).

In 1945, Len had read in the local paper of Henry Hemmings’ forthcoming funeral and had attended it, re-establishing contact with the Abingdon morris men.  He would have gone to the first postwar Mayor’s Day dancing in June 1949 but was dancing elsewhere with OMM.  He did however send Abingdon a card conveying Oxford Morris Mens’ best wishes for a successful day.  He attended Abingdon practices from autumn 1949 onwards, initially to learn the dances, but would also fill in as musician if Major Fryer was not present.  Whether as a guest or with OMM or later as an Abingdon member, he thereafter attended all Mayor’s Days in the 50s except 1954, when he was on holiday.  He was invited to join Abingdon morris in 1953, and around that time set up the Barnardos Boys morris team at Caldecott House which carried on for about 6 years.  This first Barbardos Boys team was taught dances that were from the standard Ring repertoire and not the Abingdon traditional dances.  From around 1955 Len gradually took over from Francis Fryer as Abingdon musician. In 1958 Abingdon ceased regular practices, but Len would play for them when they did dance in public.  In the early 1960s Len would attend Ring Representative meetings on behalf of both Abingdon and Oxford City.  In 1961 he again started teaching morris to the Barnardos Boys but this time teaching them Abingdon dances.  At about the same time, it became apparent that Abingdon morris would die if it did not recruit some new members, and Len and Les Argyle started to organise practices in Abingdon to teach the Abingdon dances to such “Oxford Men” as John White, Frank and Peter Jeal, and Pat Patterson.  Len came to rely on lifts from John White to drive him to Abingdon or Oxford for morris practices and events.  One of the reasons that there was no Mayor’s Day in 1963 was that Len (by now aged 77) was on holiday with his wife that June and there was no other musician.  By 1966 he was teaching the Abingdon tunes to John White so that he could play for Abingdon on May Morning.  He died in February 1967, and left a bequest to the Abingdon morris team.

Leonard S Bardwell was born in Hammersmith, London in about 1886.  In 1891 he was aged 5 living with his parents (Luther and Marian) and 2 younger brothers in Hammersmith.  In 1901, aged 15, he was boarding with a family in Lancaster, but by 1911 aged 25 he was living with his widowed mother and four younger brothers in Kingston on Thames, Surrey, occupation 2nd class clerk in the India Office.  In 1914 he married his first cousin Margory Bradley-Clark in Kingston, Surrey.  In 1927 he joined the EFDS and took up morris as well as other dancing in mixed classes.  After 2 years of classes he joined Greensleeves and also East Surrey, who would both become founder members of the Morris Ring in 1934.  Before the Ring formation in 1934 he had been out with Cambridge men (Kenworthy Schofield, Arthur Peck, etc) helping them collect from old dancers and he eventually became an honorary member of the Travelling Morrice (Cambridge Morris Men on tour).  He was elected as East Surrey’s first bagman and became friends with Francis Fryer, who would come over to East Surrey’s morris day in May with Wargrave MM.  He kept dancing with Greensleeves and East Surrey until war broke in 1939.  At the end of the war he had a nervous breakdown and retired from his Civil Service job in London to move to Harwell.  Len’s daughter Hilary married the author Kingsley Amis in 1948 and he based the character of Professor Ned Welsh in his novel Lucky Jim on Len – apparently trying to ridicule Len, who never seemed to be bothered by it.   On 18th February 1967 Len Bardwell died, and his funeral was at Headington Crematorium the following Wednesday (22nd Feb 1967).

References

  • A photocopied article, possibly from a publication such as ‘Morris Matters’, which contains an autobiographical essay by Len dated 9th July 1962, followed by a short obituary written by Roy Dommett.
  • A photocopy of a draft of the first twenty years history of Oxford Morris Men (1938-57) by Mike Heaney, dated May 1979. This was in the possession of Les Argyle when he died and has passed into the paper archives of ATMD.  We don’t know if the promised full version was ever published.  If it was, Oxford City Morris don’t have a copy.
  • Article in The Oldie November 2020 by Jenny Bardwell (Len’s grand-daughter) “Lucky Jim and my unlucky grandpa”.
  • Searches of the database in familysearch.org
  • Material in ATMD archives and history, diaries etc

 

Leslie (Les) Argyle

Les Argyle started morris dancing in 1950 with Oxford Morris Men (OMM).  Soon after that he met some Abingdon morris dancers who asked why he was going to Oxford to dance when he could join Abingdon, and in 1951 he started going to Abingdon morris practices as well.  He went with them as a reserve dancer on their January 1952 trip to dance at the Royal Albert Hall.  Just before their first performance the Fool (William Hackett) said that he could not dance as he had a bad leg and at very short notice Les was asked to replace him as Fool.  This was Les’s first public appearance as a morris dancer – previously he had only been to Oxford and Abingdon practices, and had acted as a collector for Oxford performances.  Around the end of 1951, OMM lost most of its members to the newly-reformed Oxford University MM or Headington Quarry MM and ceased to perform.  Les then joined the Oxford University MM as a guest for a few years as well as starting to appear regularly with Abingdon as a dancer.  In 1957 Oxford City Morris Men formed from the remains of the original OMM and Les joined them as well as continuing to dance with Abingdon.  During the 1960s he and Len Bardwell took it upon themselves to teach Abingdon dances to some of the Oxford men, which kept the Abingdon team going during the very lean years before the influx of new blood in 1967.  Some time towards the end of the 1970s Les stopped dancing with Oxford City MM, possibly because of the new rule that Abingdon dancers were not allowed to dance with other teams.  During the 1970s he was one of those who revived the Abingdon Mummers, performing the Sunningwell play round the pubs in Abingdon and, initially, in Sunningwell, later in Drayton and Steventon, as well as during Advent Weekend at Cogges Farm.  He performed in just about every performance of the Mummers play up to 2009, mainly as First Man, but claimed to have played every part at least once.  In June 1980, Les was elected Mayor of Ock Street, following the death of his predecessor Charlie Brett.  He remained as Mayor until June 1996, when he lost the election to Stuart Jackson.  He became Lead Dancer in 1998 and continued this until the end of 2003.  In 1971 Jack Hyde gave him his collection of photographs and other material from which Les compiled the first ATMD scrapbook.  He went on to compile Scrapbooks 2 (1972-81), 3 (1981-90), 4 (1991-1999) and 5 (2000-2010).  For Les’s 80th birthday, ATMD devised a new dance in his honour “How D’You Do Sir” which was developed at ‘secret practices’ held in the scout hut of the Baptist Church, and on 2nd June 2007, a few days after his birthday, it was performed for him at a party on the lawn of Trinity Church.  Les had also himself earler created two new dances for Abingdon: Gentleman Jack (in honour of Jack Hyde’s 80th birthday) and Buttercup Joe (in honour of Johnny Grimsdale).  “How D’You Do Sir” was performed during Les’s funeral service in Trinity Church in January 2014.

Leslie Aubrey Argyle was born in May 1927 in Boxhill Road (off Oxford Road) to parents Aubrey and Frances (nee Trotman) who had married in 1926.  He attended the Council School (now Carswell School) and left at the age of 14 to work in an accountant’s office.  In 1944 the accountant’s firm had to let him go and he went to work at Trotman’s Bakery in Ock Street, which belonged to his uncle.  What he originally considered a temporary job lasted for 40 years, until Trotman’s was taken over, and after that he worked for Day’s Bakery in Edward Street and then Bath Street.  During those years he would sometimes make the buns for a town Bun Throwing.  Like his parents, Les was an active member of the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Ock Street and when that closed in 1945 they transferred to Trinity Church.  Les was a Steward at Trinity Church for 53 years.  As a young man after the second world war, Les looked to Oxford for his social life and entertainment and his main pastimes were hiking and youth hostelling.  At the Oxford YHA social evenings which he regularly attended he was introduced to Country Dancing and from that connection he was invited to join the Oxford Morris Men in 1950.  He did say that as a boy he had seen the 1930s Abingdon morris team snd thought them to be a ‘bit of a rough lot’ and at the time was not at all tempted to join them.  However, he did join the Abingdon team in 1951 and continued to dance with them for the rest of his life.  He led a full social life, often going to evening concerts and plays in Oxford and also to London (mainly Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells) but always managing an early start at the bakery the next morning.  He travelled abroad quite often and was an active member of the Abingdon Anglo-German Club.  Until well into his 70s he would go on long walks around the Abingdon area.  He lived in the same house in Boxhill Road until the death of his father in 1983, after which he moved to a flat at 105 Ock Street, where his back shed became the storage place for the Mayor of Ock Street’s Chair and the election stage.  Towards the end of his life, Les developed Parkinson’s and moved into Old Station House.  He died on 6th January 2014 and his funeral was on Friday 17th January 2014.  At the service in Trinity Church a morris musician played for both the entrance and exit of the coffin, and the morris team danced “How D’You Do Sir” during the service.

References

  • Material in ATMD scrapbooks and archives
  • ‘Abingdon Remembered’ Interview by Angela Smith 30th January 2002 (transcript kindly provided by Jonathan Leach)
  • Past conversations with Les
  • Searches of the database in familysearch.org

 

Frank Purslow

In the 1950s Frank Purslow was a folk enthusiast and collector who started to visit Abingdon Mayor’s Day as a spectator.  Interviewed in a pub in Bampton in 1980 he claimed that he was first asked to dance with Abingdon as a replacement fool one Mayor’s Day: examination of photos of the time suggest that this was probably 1959, and not earlier as had been thought.  He is definitely in a photo of Abingdon dancing in Headington at the September 1959 Ring Meeting and by 1960 he was definitely a member of the Abingdon morris team as it was he who arranged for Roy Dommett to be invited to join them, which Roy did at the Reigate Ring Meeting in September 1960.  Frank and Roy tried, with varying degrees of success, to collect details of the Abingdon morris tradition from Tom Hemmings and Major Fryer during their last few months, and from those with connections to the 1930s team like Percy Hemmings.  In 1960, Frank also visited Bampton, who had just lost their main musician, and suggested to Francis Shergold that a friend of his from London, Reg Hall, be invited to play for Bampton for their 1960 Whit Monday dancing, something he has done every year since.  During 1960, 1961 and early 1962, Frank Purslow would travel up from London to Abingdon to dance or attend a practice, and at least once filled in as melodeon player.  He regularly wrote to Jack Hyde with suggestions of how Abingdon morris should be organised on more traditional lines (!) and often compared them unfavourably to Bampton, who he was now also dancing with.  Although an ‘outsider’ living in London, he objected very strongly to ‘men from Oxford’ being invited to practices in Abingdon.  [These ‘men from Oxford’ included one man who lived in Abingdon and others who lived in villages close by, including two who had been to school in Abingdon.]  Frank resigned in a letter dated 13th August 1962 saying he wanted no part in an Oxford-dominated team, and informed Jack Hyde that on 15th August 1962 he would be moving from London to Bampton.  At the same time, he and Roy Dommett fell out, mainly over a cancelled Cotswold Tour by Abingdon, Bampton and Chipping Campden and whether the ‘men from Oxford’ would be welcome on it dancing with the Abingdon side. 

Frank Purslow was born Frank Chapman, in Edgbaston, Birmingham, on 20 February 1926.  He moved to London after the Second World War, and started going to a folk club run by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd.  He travelled to Suffolk, Norfolk, Sussex and elsewhere to collect songs from old traditional singers and became a volunteer at the library of Cecil Sharp House, where he started his work on indexing songs collected by Henry and Robert Hammond (mainly from Dorset) and by George Gardiner (from Hampshire).  In August 1962 he moved from 17 Primrose Hill Road, London, NW3 to Bampton, initially to the Jubilee Inn where he converted the cafe into his living quarters, and then to Primrose Cottage, Weald, Bampton.  He continued his work with the Vaughan Williams library and in 1965 his paperback book of folk songs “Marrow Bones” was published by EFDS Publications and was one of the driving forces behind the revival of traditional folk singing in the 1960s.  [EFDS Publications was a joint venture between the EFDSS and Chappell & Co.  Frank’s approach to traditional folk music is epitomised in comments he makes in the introduction on accompaniment such as “There are really only two ways of accompanying traditional songs – as simply as possible, or not at all” and “In every case fancy chords must be avoided”]  He published two important articles in Folk Music Journal on George Gardiner (1967) and the Hammond brothers (1968) and edited further folk song books The Wanton Seed (1968), The Constant Lovers (1972), and The Foggy Dew (1974).  He danced, fooled and played with both Shergold and Woodley morris teams in Bampton and was a member of the Bampton Mummers.  In 1974 he and Don Rouse formed the Bampton Morris Eight ceilidh band, which the following year became the Bampton Barn Dance band and continued until 2004.  He died on 25th April 2007 aged 81.  The following month a revised edition of his Marrow Bones book was published.  Frank’s EFDSS Gold Badge award, which he had been due to receive in May, was presented to his half-brother after the funeral.

References

 

Roy Dommett

Roy Dommett had been morris dancing for some years before he joined the Abingdon morris team in September 1960.  He had started collecting unpublished morris dances in 1958 and made many collecting trips to the Cotswolds with Frank Purslow.  Frank had started to dance as a guest with Abingdon around that time and arranged for Roy to be invited to join Abingdon, which he did at the Reigate Ring Meeting in September 1960.  Roy started to visit Abingdon for what practices and events there were in the early 1960s.  He said that he felt more at home with the working men of the Abingdon team and even discovered that his father and Jack Hyde had briefly worked together during World War 2 at the Pressed Steel works in Cowley.  Until September 1963, when Abingdon station closed to passengers, he would travel the 40 miles from his home in Hampshire by rail, which involved 2 changes of train (at Reading and Radley) and a bus ride.  After that he bought a car in order to keep travelling to Abingdon and elsewhere.  He would often bring his second son Simon to practices and performances where he sometimes appeared as a boy dancer, and occasionally would bring two other sons, Michael and Steven, too.  Roy was one of those who kept the Abingdon morris going during the lean years from 1960 to 1967, and he was instrumental in adding more dances to the Abingdon repertoire, such as Maid of the Mill.  At the same time as he was dancing with Abingdon, Roy was busy collecting morris and other dances from old collectors’ manuscripts and from those that were old enough to remember traditional dances taking place.  His series of advanced morris instructionals at Halsway Manor between 1964 and 1970 were a catalyst for many defunct morris traditions to be revived.  Although he did make notes on Abingdon dances and circulated them internally to Ring representatives in both 1964 and 1966, he did not actively teach the Abingdon dances to other teams.  Roy made his last appearance as an Abngdon dancer in 1970, making the point that Abingdon no longer needed dancers from outside the town and surrounding area to make up the numbers.

Although he had ceased to dance with Abingdon by then, Roy Dommett stood as a candidate for Squire of the Morris Ring in 1972 with Abingdon named as his affiliation: he only just lost after a third ballot.  In 1974-5 he fell out with Abingdon’s bagman at the time, Colin Corner, over the subject of womens’ morris and was accused, probably unfairly, of wanting to teach Abingdon dances to others.  He supported the breakaway that led to the formation of Mr Hemmings Morris Dancers in 1979 and attended some of their functions in the following years.

Roy Leonard Dommett was born in Southampton on 25th June 1933 to parents Leonard, a painter and decorator, and Rose (nee Draper), a cook and housekeeper.  He was educated at Itchen Grammar School and Bristol University, and afterwards worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Farnborough from 1953 to 2000.  In that time he worked on all the major UK missile programmes, as well as on rockets to deliver satellites into orbit.  In November 1955 he married Marguerite Dawson and they had seven sons and one daughter.  They lived in Fleet, Hants and later in Church Crookham, Hants.

In 1954 he became a founder member of Farnborough Morris which at the time was centred on RAE and also danced with a team called the Border Morris (the border being that between Surrey and Hampshire) which later was based at Alton.  He started to collect hitherto-forgotten morris traditions in 1958 and as a result was introduced to Frank Purslow by Reg Hall.  He and Frank made several collecting trips to the Cotswolds together and he carried out interviews with old dancers at Abingdon, Bampton, Bidford, Eynsham and Ilmington, with others who knew about the morris at Ascott, Ducklington and Leafield, and discovered manuscripts on the Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oddington, Stanton Harcourt and Wheatley Cotswold morris traditions as well as the Welsh Border and West Midlands morris.  In 1956 he also became associated with Thames Valley morris and in 1960 Fank Purslow introduced him to the Abingdon team, who he danced with for about 10 years.  In the 1960s he also danced (or more often fooled) with Oxford City, Oxford University and other teams, and in the late 1960s also became associated with Bath City Morris.  So as not to need to have many individual morris kits to appear with all the teams he was associated with, he would normally turn up in a giant Andy Pandy suit.  He gave many instructionals on the Cotswold traditions he had resurrected and was a major contributor to Lionel Bacon’s ‘black book’ (A Handbook of Morris Dances, first published 1974 by the Morris Ring) which increased the number of published Cotswold, Border and similar morris dances from 80 to 385.  In the 1970s he started to teach and encourage the upssurge in womens’ morris, initially of the North-West clog type but later encompassing a variety of styles and traditions, including the revival of stave dancing.  He was awarded the EFDSS Gold Badge in 2001.

In 1991, he was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Medal and in the same year he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).  He died on 2nd November 2015.  A celebration of his life was held on Saturday 21st November 2015 at Christ Church, Church Crookham and was attended by many dancers and musicians.     

References

Roy Dommett did not publish any books on morris but he contributed many articles to magazines such as Morris Matters and distributed notes on various traditions at his instructionals and other meetings.  There have been several publications of his on the web, not all of which are still available.  The material above has been collated from a variety of sources including printouts from web sites that are no longer available.  A few of the more important ones that are still available online are:

 

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