Sheffield City Morris
Our historyOur dances are Cotswold style, even if not always Cotswold as you will know it! They are mainly from the “Medup” tradition which is either “a small village nestling in the bosom of the Pennine foothills twixt Don and Dearne”, or shorthand for “made up by ourselves”.
We also perform our unique version of the Bampton tradition with a couple of Upton dances thrown in for good measure.
We have strong vocal and instrumental expertise, enabling us to provide a full and varied display programme at folk festivals throughout the UK, Europe and further afield.
Sheffield City Morris Men was founded by Bob Hazelwood in 1975. The women’s side was started in 2018.
The History of Sheffield City Morris– From a paper presented to a conference at Sheffield University in 1987 organised by the Department of Lore & Language
The formation of Sheffield City Morris Men (SCMM) dates back to 1975 when Bob Hazelwood came back to Sheffield from London. While living in London in the early 1970s, Bob had been associated with Chingford Morris Men and had been impressed by two things:
1. They were a very showy and entertaining team.
2. They had the beginnings of a tradition of their own.
Chingford’s foreman, Geoff Hughes, had taken the limited information provided on the Upton-on-Severn Stick Dance in Lionel Bacon’s A Handbook of Morris Dancing2and used this as a basis for devising a stick dance for the team. In fact it is worth noting that most teams that perform the “Upton Stick Dance” are actually dancing the Chingford version.
Sheffield City Morris was started, therefore, as an attempt to form a team which embodied the qualities Bob had found at Chingford. He wanted a team that would be, in his words, “fit, young, sexy, worked hard at what they were doing, and who would create something new.”3 Bob got together some people he knew through the folk clubs in Sheffield, and this embryonic team began practising on May 1st, 1975.
The first dances the team learned were based on those found at Bampton in Oxfordshire. There were primarily two reasons for this. The first was that Bob played the anglo-concertina and the melodeon and was fond of the tunes. Secondly, he believed that the single stepping central to this tradition provided a solid foundation for the development of a team style. Within a year the dances were Bampton in name, tune, and figures but “new” in style. There were certain minor adaptations, such as beginning on the right foot rather than the left, and quite deliberately maintaining the dancing momentum for the back step, rather than relaxing into the “rolling walk” style common to many teams. Bob also created and taught his version of what he thought the Upton-on-Severn Stick Dance would look like, based on his experience with Chingford as well as the available information.
This developing style was also informed by the fact that from the beginning it was obvious that the club would be an urban Morris team performing in city centres for the benefit of the public, rather than going around country pubs for the benefit of themselves. The style, therefore, had to be as showy and entertaining as possible. One of the ways in which it was thought this could be achieved was to emphasise the use of the handkerchiefs. Although an audience may be initially attracted by the sound of the bells and the music, what they see is not the feet but the hands and the handkerchiefs. This being the case, we decided to fully extend the arms, flick the handkerchiefs upwards, and then let them float down as slowly as possible. The stepping was built around this so that the coordination between the handwork and footwork is very exact.
This precision was an obvious focal point of the practice sessions in the early years, yet the weekly practices also involved rigorous physical training. Bob took the view that anyone who danced out with Sheffield City Morris would have to be very fit in order to sustain a long tour, so it was quite common to spend fifteen minutes at a time capering around the room!
While potentially making Bob unpopular, this kind of hard driving set an atmosphere of discipline and determination conducive to later repertoire developments. Bob had tried to start the best Morris team in the world. Second best would be a team that only occasionally hit “the high spots”. This took a tremendous amount of drive, initiative and, not to put too fine a point on it, autocracy. If the philosophy and objectives he established had any validity, the team would survive and grow after he had left.
The debt that Sheffield City Morris owes to Chingford Morris cannot be understated. They were Bob’s inspiration and the team’s yardstick for dancing excellence. The first time we danced with them was just after many of their experienced members had left to form another Morris team, the Albion Morris Men. I was in awe; if this Chingford team was but the residue, what was the team like before the split? They danced brilliant Morris and dazzling rapper and were involved in the training of a boys’ team who amazed us with their speed and precision. Chingford had also developed dances and created their own style.
With our isolated existence, the making up of Morris dances was not taboo, but rather the natural progression of the ideals. Sheffield City Morris Men had often talked about developing their dances and saw that option as a long term project. However, as outlined above, the seeds which had been sown made the development occur much more rapidly.
Making a mark: The Upton-on-Severn Handkerchief Dance Having decided that an impression must be made and that Bledington must go, it was inevitable that the “Black Book”, Lionel Bacon’s A Handbook of Morris Dancing, was scoured for inspiration. I have the utmost appreciation for this work, but for a dancer with my limitations, it was of little use. As Bacon himself states, the book is an “aide-memoire”4 rather than a training manual. With my lack of experience the book had no memory to jog. The only thing that caught my eye were the notes on the Upton-on-Severn Handkerchief Dance. The most distinctive feature of this Upton dance is what we call the “set change” whereby numbers one and six, who are at opposite corners, approach each other and the set reorientates itself so that one and six are the middle couple (see Figure 1). In fact, Bob had already developed the Upton figures, so with only hand waving and the set-change figure to develop this seemed the ideal vehicle to “boost my ego”.
This was, of course, more difficult than I had anticipated. How does one develop a method of hand waving that is neither a straight “lift” from another tradition nor a complicated and contrived attempt at uniqueness? What was developed is as follows: both arms work together, each held at a right angle at the elbow, similar to a child pretending to be a steam engine. From this starting position the arms are thrown upwards on beat one, describe a horizontal circle (right hand moving clockwise and left counterclockwise) on beat two, and are lowered back to the starting position on beat three. I imagine some readers are thinking, “Surely, that’s what Chipping-of-the-Bush do” or “He said things could become contrived, and he was right.” If it is from “Chipping-of-the-Bush”, I offer both thanks and apology to that tradition. To those who view the movement as contrived, I would perhaps ask them to see the movement in performance, and then I will quite willingly accept their criticism.
To some extent, perhaps the arm movements we developed for the Upton Handkerchief Dance are contrived, for while they are executed within the space of three beats, a single step takes one beat but commonly occurs in groups of two or four as dictated by the music. This means that the arms and feet are not fully coordinated, and this led to further complications when working on a transition into the set change. Because of its distinctive nature, we wanted to draw attention to the set change feature, and we found that leading into it with four capers added flare without complexity. So, in relation to standard eight bar, or sixteen beat, Morris tunes, this transition would consist of twelve single steps and four capers. When we tried this, however, we discovered that the arms, after twelve beats, were down, in the starting position, making it very awkward to go immediately into four capers. The choices were either to put in a feint step, change the hand movement, or alter the music to twenty beats so that the arms would be in the raised position before the capers. Not wishing to alter the hand movement, and finding the feint steps in Bledington unappealing, we chose to find music that fitted the dance, that is, twenty beat music. After some searching, we discovered the tune “Oats and Beans and Barley”. Factors Leading to the Development of Our own dance style
When I took over the foreman’s post from Bob Hazelwood in 1977, the team was facing several difficulties. These problems, along with one significant factor, led to the development of our own dance style. The problems were:
1.The unsuitability of Bledington as a second tradition.
2.The team’s isolation and immaturity.
3.The new foreman’s personal difficulties.
The factor was:
The connection with Chingford Morris Men.
The Bledington Problem
For the first year the team practised and danced Bampton only. However, we saw ourselves as a performance team and we felt that Bampton, with no stick dances, limited our performance. To widen the team’s repertoire for the second year, then, Bob introduced the Bledington style. He had danced this with Chingford, and although confident to teach it, never was particularly happy with it as a tradition to complement Bampton. The basic problem was the double step. The majority of dancers in the team were new to Morris in particular and, like many men, new to dance movement in general.
It may be useful here to outline our practice methods at the time. Although we practised all year round, the new season, at which time we took on new dancers, would begin in September after our Annual General Meeting. A great deal of emphasis was placed on achieving a common stepping style. Beginners would spend several weeks practising the steps only. Once an acceptable standard had been achieved, then the handkerchief would be introduced. When the dancers had these basics right, only then would figures be danced. In fact, the experienced dancers would not actually practise complete dances until, perhaps, February. Each week, one figure would be concentrated on, and at the end of the session a complete dance might be performed, more for recreational purposes than “serious” practise. It would be fair to say that practice nights, as indicated above, were an arduous business consisting of sweat and application with little inspiration.
In order to facilitate adding the Bledington dances to our repertoire, the team was split into two groups. The beginners, who numbered about six, were taught Bampton, as it formed the core of our performable repertoire, and only the fourteen experienced dancers were introduced to Bledington. Despite this experience and the nature of the practice sessions, we never achieved the team’s high, self-imposed standard when performing the Bledington dances in public. The beginners also faced the problem of regularly practising without experienced dancers. When year three arrived the problem was further compounded. We then had a team consisting of fourteen dancers proficient in both Bampton and Bledington, six Bampton only dancers, and about six complete beginners. The logistics for organising practice nights were obviously immense.
To persevere with Bledington, then, seemed fraught with difficulties, although it must be said that the public display was improving. Nevertheless, when I took over from Bob the team decided to look for an alternative second tradition, preferably based on a single step.
The manner in which Medup dances have been developed has changed slightly over the past few years. In the early years of the development the foreman would usually introduce an idea to the team. It would often be a complete dance, such as “Nottingham Lil” or “Little Boney”, which would be presented as a whole to the club. Over the past four years, however, we have changed this style of development and the following two methods have emerged:
Brainstorming; that is six to eight people trying out ideas on each other.
One person introducing a particular central idea and everyone chipping in to transform that idea into a chorus for the dance.
The overriding principle of these two ways of developing Medup has been that the fine details have been hammered out by the whole club; no one member has claimed to have a dance step perfect when first presented to the team. However, this state of affairs can present the foreman with difficulties. He may have his own ideas, and yet he may find himself simply adjudicating over different views of how to perform a particular chorus.
Since the figures of our Medup style have been standardised at five – Cast, Angles, Three Top, Half-rounds and Circle – the creation of new dances takes place primarily in the chorus. While this may sound simple, it must be viewed in the light of the problems inherent in practice sessions, as well as the demands of the performance context. New members have to be trained in our three styles: Bampton, Upton, Medup. Also, we often have to concentrate our efforts preparing for big bookings, such as national folk festivals and trips abroad. We are therefore left with little time for actually developing Medup.
Besides the logistical requirement of time, we need several other conditions in order to create dances within the Medup style:
A good tune. This has become increasingly prerequisite as we need to keep up the interest of our musicians as well as our musical standards.
Dancers with ideas, experience, and patience.
One or more committed and patient musicians to help us marry tunes to ideas.
As a club, we know when a movement seems contrived, but we also collectively know when something feels right. However, even when certain movements have been agreed upon, there are often differing interpretations and in the end the foreman must be the final arbiter. Dropping the Bledington dances halved our repertoire, but we have managed to gradually fill that void with Medup dances. We have Medup hankie dances, Medup stick dances, Medup leapfrog, and Medup corner dances. These have been added at the rate of about one per year-seven in all so far with one currently in the making.
The Medup tradition is not limited to dancing, however. It also extends into our music, as mentioned above in the adaptation of the tune “Lillibulero”, as well as into our involvement in mumming, the resurrection of the Green Man, and the creation of our eccentric Dancing Horse. Some activities have been peripheral, others more central, but all have helped to create the identity of Sheffield City Morris.
To return to the dancing, then, I see three ways forward:
Resurrecting the dead Medup dances, ones which fell by the wayside during brainstorming. For example, set-change dances, the napping dance, and various eight man dances.
Expansion of present repertoire, i.e. set figures with varying choruses.
Jigs, double-jigs or other, unusual one-off dances.
Why do we go through all this hassle to produce a new dance tradition? Surely it would be easier to go back to the “Black Book” and root out some other tradition. But these traditions belong to others; Medup belongs to us. It is ours-the sole property of Sheffield City Morris Men. Once we have stated that principle and are committed to it, we have to develop the repertoire. Yet, in whatever manner we go forward, it will be decided by the club as a whole, observing, listening, experimenting, and above all, enjoying. If we didn’t enjoy it, we would have packed up years ago.
Excepts from speeches given at our 50th Anniversary Party, 29th March 2025
First of all let me repeat Kevin’s earlier thanks to all those involved in organising this splendid evening. And secondly I’d also like to say “thank you” to our visitors, some of whom who have travelled quite a distance to come to this anniversary – I can assure you that after this short speech the hospitality will continue – but with cake. I am know all our visitors have been made very welcome and it has been a delight to see you. I only wish I could remember your names.
As a reminder we have performed at all major British festivals; to France on a number of occasions, Spain, Germany, Poland, Ireland a couple of times, Hungary twice and Portugal. And of course the first British folk-dance team of any sort to visit South America when we went to the Festival of the Middle of the Earth in Ecuador.
Truly a well-travelled side and we have often received magnificent hospitality and in one case the festival paid for flights! We drank the the European wine lake in Portugal; the French Guyana Rum surplus in France; the Spanish Cava excess in Catalunya; vodka mixed with chili sauce in Poland and in
Hungary the beer was so low cost we even bought our own. There was no Guinness excess when we were in Dublin, but we
were allowed drank in the free bar at the Guinness Brewery whilst ever we danced and sang. We finished up so exhausted a visit to an Irish dancing-shoe shop had to be cancelled and we could hardly move the next day. Amongst the hundreds of memories we share, quite a few came from that first trip to Ireland. We were so looking forward to the
full Irish breakfast and we did receive it – we received the egg on Monday; sausage Tuesday; fried bread Wednesday; the
bacon Thursday etc. On the final day which was a Sunday they gave us a slice of bread toasted on one side only and a banana.
We christened it the Full Caribbean and sang a Harry Belafonte song.
In all of this we have been mostly accompanied by wives and partners; later on with children and many of them have been a
dancing credit to both us and themselves, and played their part in our dancing life. And for the past few years we have had a women’s side who I am sure will soon begin saving up and sharing their own memories, if they are not already doing so.
When I was teaching there would always be one student who saw me performing and the inevitable questions would start.
“Dave” they used to say “why do you do morris dancing?” In answer I reeled off the litany of places we visited, the variety and copious quantities of alcohol we drank at little cost, and naturally exagerrated the beauty and numbers of of the opposite sex we attracted. Having said all this I turned the tables and asked them what they did for a hobby. Invariable they answered “I watch Sheffield Wednesday”.
Please, all of you still dancing keep up the reputation of Sheffield City Morris, both men and women by eating the rest of the food and drinking the bar dry. Like all of us, I am looking forward to the next 50 years.
A woman first came to join the men at a practice some time in 2018, the exact date is an unknown. This number increased to 6 women during the pandemic when we learned some of the men’s dances in the Burton street car park. We have been thriving ever since and now have 13 members.
As well as dancing a subset of the men’s dances, We now also have half a dozen dances of our own, mostly in Medup style.
Our first dance out was meant to be at Thornbridge 2020 but that was of course cancelled. We have been arguing all day about when exactly it turned out to be. the Stag at Nether Edge. Possibly in 2021. Or also possibly NYD 2022 outside the cathedral
Our first kit consisted of blue jeans, however we soon embraced the inevitable and we are now also very proud to be the wearers of the lovely green trousers..
