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25 Years ofEast Saxon Sword. |
East Saxon Sword has made it to it's 25th Anniversary, putting it's early beginnings in 1972. Despite having two founder members still actively dancing in today's team, the recall of the early 2-3 years is somewhat hazy! There are one or two key photographs which anchor certain events to dates and the rest will be open for conjecture at our planned re-union later this year.
Around 1970/71 a folk singing group was forming in the Newham area of East London with links to the West Ham Central Mission Baptist Church (as it was then called) in Plaistow. Some of the group fancied a dabble in longsword dancing and there is a vague memory of experimenting in a front room and back garden!
At the same time, John Pilfold (a long-standing EFDSS member) and family moved up from Kent to work in Whipps Cross Hospital and somehow became aware of the folk singing group. John was keen to promote folk activities wherever he was and offered to run some barn dances at the Lawrence Hall Community Centre attached to the Baptist Church.
The barn dances became a regular monthly event with John leading the evenings (with records) and soon we discovered he had danced and taught longsword also. Well, it was inevitable that he would teach us a dance over the months at these dances (we think Kirkby Malzeard) and that it was done for its novelty in a fairly informal manner. His wife, Valerie, would play the fiddle for us.
In 1972 tragedy struck with Valerie dying from cancer after a long illness. This was to be of major significance in the birth of a sword dance team. John obviously spent some time re-adjusting to life without Valerie and later in the next year organised a memorial concert in her name at the Whipps Cross Hospital. John asked if we would do a sword dance in her honour at the concert - there was no question about it, yes we would!
This prompted the design and manufacture of a costume. Orange and brown material was readily available from local cloth shops and two end-of-roll bales were obtained. A team name took a little longer. By now we had some links with the Earls of Essex Morris Men and we frequented the Earl of Essex Pub in Manor Park on the East London/Essex border. 'Essex' was becoming a theme. Thoughts on old times in the Essex area took us back to Romans and Saxons.
'Saxons' seemed an ideal name to complement the 'Earls', but we needed a more formal official name. With some ingenuity, 'East Saxon Sword' was born!
To enhance the costume, an emblem was required for the back of the jacket. What could be better than the symbol of the seaxe (a scimitar-like sword)? The inside wall of the Earl of Essex Pub had a plaster relief of the Essex coat of arms (3 seaxes). A life-size tracing of one was a perfect fit for the back of the jackets. With the addition of white shirt and socks and brown shoes, our costume was complete.
During August of that year, several extra dance practices were held to improve the dance ready for the inaugural display in September. By now a concertina player had joined us and he became our original musician.
The dance at the memorial concert was performed without any major disasters and generally well accepted. A photograph of the occasion shows the identifiable team members and also that the musician was not the concertina player, on this occasion, but the wife of one of the dancers (playing the accordion).
From here, the team started to get opportunities to dance out via contacts through one or two team members to folk clubs and colleges. All the while our links with the Earls strengthened, with several dancers in both teams.
1975 saw our first international event as part of a combined Earls/Saxons and others coach party to Amsterdam for a week. We even developed a 'mixed' team to dance Flamborough!
Around this time there was a strong interest in doing some North West morris and considerable effort went into adding and modifying our kit and arranging for clogs for eveyone - rubbers and irons! We also began our long-standing friendship with Stevenage Sword and from the first meeting we learnt the Greatham Longsword Dance from Redcar Sword Dancers who had come down for the weekend. We were to meet Redcar Sword many years later at Whitchurch Festival and found our version still closely resembled their's!
Through the 70's we became more established and with the arrival of the ex-Keele Rapper foreman, revamped our rapper dance. By now, dance displays involving longsword, rapper and NW morris were becoming difficult with the costume changes in mid-display. Also the 3 dance forms were not sustainable to our intended standard on one 2 hour practice session a week. After much discussion and some sadness we abandoned the NW morris to return to our 'roots' and concentrate on sword.
Into the 80's and more outings on days of dance and even organising our own, usually in Central London. In 1984 we were booked for our first folk festival (Iron Acton) followed by a booking to Chippenham Folk Festival the very next year. We must have created a good impression as we have been going there ever since!
In 1986 we decided that our costume jackets needed replacing. But where do you get orange wool material? To preserve the team colours (well-known in the dancing world by now) we went to desperate measures and bought 50 metres of woollen cloth specially dyed to our requirements! (so any teams out there that want orange material, make us an offer!).
By this time the annual (well, almost) rapper dance competition, widely known as DERT (Dancing England Rapper Tournament) was firmly established. We competed from about 1987, with mixed success over the years. We became more well-known by other teams and we knew we had 'made it' when we hosted the Rapper Tournament in 1995 in Leytonstone, East London.
1995 was quite an eventful year as we went to the Half Moon Rapper 10th. Ale in New York in the February before hosting the DERT in April! We shall always remember the in-flight soft drinks courtesey of Kuwaiti Airlines! To finish off the 'international year' we had a very pleasant weekend in Eindhoven in September to see Motley Morris and do a longsword workshop.
Coming up-to-date we have been busy at various folk events and special functions (for example, at a memorial service for Susan Fleetwood at St. James' Church,Picadilly, Central London - where it was definitely 'spot-the-celebs' time!).
An excellent evening of celebration saw many ex-Saxons seeing if they could still do a bit, or just remembering how it used to be.