At the Masons Arms with Headington Quarry Morris

May Bank Holiday Monday this year sent me up the hill to Headington to watch a home side in action. I’d seen them play away. I’d observed them in training. But I was keen to stand shoulder to shoulder with the local crowd. And though dark clouds and impending rain meant they’d not turned out in force, there were still a good crowd of stalwart supporters gathered, pint glasses in hand under the shelter of trees on the green opposite the Masons Arms in Quarry School Place. For this is the spiritual setting for the Headington Quarry Morris Dancers, used by generations of devotees to leap, skip and caper along with a healthy helping of handkerchief waving and stick bashing to the rhythmic beat of their bell pads and the merry tunes of the Anglo concertina. There is history here. This the very side responsible for a turnaround in the fortunes of this folk tradition, by the end of the 19^th century in danger of extinction. And the weeks around Whitsun, not May morning when dozens of other sides head down to Magdalen Bridge, was traditionally their start to the summer season.

I’ve always found something earthy and unpretentious about this form of entertainment, thought to have arrived here from Flanders back in the 1400s, the word derived from the French ‘Morisque’ meaning ‘dance’. Played out away from the stiff ceremonials of the University, the Quarry side is part of an age-old social ritual unconstrained by the conventions of the highbrow institution down below. Indeed, the part played by the ‘fool’ with his inflated bladder on a stick used to berate the other dancers was itself a playful mockery of the sticks used by officialdom; for these are festivities created by working people, to take a break from the day job, seizing the chance to let their hair down. Washed down with large quantities of local ale.

And you can’t escape the kind of work that was done here. It’s there in the name of Quarry, and the local pub the Mason’s Arms. It’s the emblem on the badges of the distinctive peaked caps the local side wear to dance and it’s branded onto the sticks they bash together to stir spring into action; cross hammers each with a different shaped head to chip out the limestone from the local pits, with a chisel in the middle to shape it. This was the stuff used by the colleges to build their gated communities from the medieval period onwards – All Souls was almost entirely constructed using stone from Headington Quarry. Before the stocks were depleted, more durable materials were found elsewhere, and the Cowley car factory up the road offered a new kind of employment.

Quarry is still a place of hills and hollows, of unexpected dips and depressions, of long lanes and narrow passageways, made over hundreds of years by the self-employed quarrymen who first set up camp here. Living a hand to mouth existence, they were an independent lot. Their wives and widows set up laundries washing Oxford’s dirty linen, while they dug and delved and when work was scarce, depending on the season, they sold blackberries, mushrooms or holly to make ends meet. And they danced.

Indeed, it was on one of these occasions that the side made English folk legend history.

The date was Boxing Day 1899. Morris dancing by this time was rarely practised, its costumes consigned to museums like the Pitt Rivers here in Oxford, still there and filed in Collections under the title, ‘England: The Other Within’ alongside other folky phenomena like a Witches ladder and a Dorset hag stone. But earlier that year the local Quarry side had been persuaded by the Oxford antiquary and folklore enthusiast Percy Manning to reform and dance for an event he’d organised at the town’s Corn Exchange. He’d even bought them a new kit for the occasion: white trousers and shirts (Whitsun an abbreviation of White Sunday so possibly the reason for the colour), red and blue baldrics (cross ribbons worn on the front and back held together with small rosettes), pads of small latten-bells strapped to the shins, caps, sticks and the all-important handkerchiefs (uniquely by this side bunched and held at all four corners). Among the group was a young bricklayer called William Kimber. His father had once danced with the side and had taught him not just the moves but also the old tunes. And so it was after a particularly hard winter, and no work for three weeks, that on the day after Christmas Kimber and his fellow dancers took to the streets to earn ‘an honest penny,’ apologising for being out at this time, it not being Whitsun. Snow had fallen as they headed up the drive to Sandfield Cottage, where as it happened, a music teacher by the name of Cecil Sharp was staying for the holidays with his mother-in-law. Six of the men formed into two lines of three in front of the house. Kimber struck up a song on his concertina, and the men began their familiar repertoire; ‘Bean Setting’ (a dance that involves the thumping and clashing of sticks), ‘Laudnum Bunches’ (a dance of springs and capers, and lots of waving and swinging of handkerchiefs) and ‘Trunkles’ (a dance of high jumps and kicking each other’s feet in mock challenge). Sharp was spellbound. He’d never heard or seen anything like it, and insisted Kimber return the following day so that he could write them all down for posterity.

So began a life-long friendship, Sharp touring Oxfordshire and beyond, first recording the thousands of the English folk dances and songs that he found (before only passed down by example or ‘by word of foot’ as they have it in morris dancing banter) and later taking Kimber with him on lecture tours to demonstrate how they were played and performed. A folk revival soon followed. Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society and Kimber danced all over the country including a turn at the Royal Albert Hall and in front of King Edward V11 and Queen Alexandra.

But it is at Quarry that he is best remembered and honoured as home-grown royalty. For well into his eighties, he continued to teach new generations of schoolboys from the local secondary school to dance morris. Ensuring the legacy continued. William ‘Merry’ (as he became known) Kimber is buried around the corner from where we are standing, near to C.S Lewis in Holy Trinity Church, his coffin carried by six Headington Quarry Morris men in full regalia, a carved stone concertina and bell pads marking his headstone. There’s even a William Kimber Crescent nearby.

They are dancing to those same tunes kept alive by Sharp and Kimber outside the Masons Arms today. They have a squire (the Captain, Dave Townsend) whose job it is to call out handy prompts, ‘back-to-back’, ‘full hey’, and ‘hup!’ unintelligible except to those in the know; and a bagman (his name Ian Nichols, who looks after the finances, largely by handing around a bag or box for tips). There’s a current vacancy for a ‘fool’. And though they are less likely to be nicknamed John ‘Brickdust’ Horner as they used, or wear out the soles on their shoes from excessive exertions during the Whitsun-ales, the side still boasts descendants from those taught by William Kimber, the much celebrated ‘Kimber Boys’. Indeed, Kimber’s great grandson Chis Kimber-Nickelson, dancing since the age of six, is one of the regulars who turn up to Monday night practice sessions. They are a traditional lot. While half the country’s morris dancing population may now be women, the Quarry side remain resolutely all men. They play by the old rules. And judging by the direction they were heading after waving their hankies goodbye, they still like a pint of real ale.

Main image: the current Headington Quarry Morris dancers outside the Masons Arms, May 26th 2025

From left to right: Brian Tasker, Anthony Parsons, Adam Wheeler, Matt Ledbury, Chris kimber-Nickelson, Ian Nichols, Steve Parker, Dave Townsend, Andy Turner, Lawrence Kelly, Jack Worth

Headington Quarry Morris dancers outside the Chequers in Headington, taken in about 1870 before the side was disbanded.

Image: Oxfordshire History Centre: POX0117386

Headington Quarry Morris dancers outside The Chequers in 1899 after they had reformed under Percy Manning. Here they are wearing outfits more like they do today.

Image: Oxfordshire History Centre POX0146867

The Quarry as it was in about 1900

William ‘Merry’ Kimber was over 6 feet tall.

William Kimber’s grave in Holy Trinity Church, Headington, with the stone accordion and bells pads,.

Dancing outside the Masons Arms on Bank Holiday Monday 2025

Around the corner at the Six Bells.

Mock combat is included in one of the dances, but back in the day when competitions were held between different sides (for who could leap the highest and the like), friendly rivalry might, after a bout of heavy drinking turn to a scrimmage, and the sticks used for fighting.

Andy Turner plays the Anglo German concertina for the Quarry side. The instrument works like a mouth organ; you get a different note when you push or pull the bellows. So it’s related to the melodian, but not a piano accordian. Historically William Kimber played an Anglo Concertina as well. ” I’ve always loved playing Morris music and William Kimber’s tunes are iconic for a concertina player,” says Andy.

‘Dancing out’ as dancing away from home is called. Here seen at The Oxford Folk Festival in Broad Street, outside Balliol College. The Headington dancers have their own unique set of steps and patterns.

Image credit: John Milnes

From left to right: Antony Parsons, his father Francis, one of the ‘Kimber boys’, and Chris Kimber-Nickelson, great grandson of William Kimber himself.