Windsor Morris

About

Windsor Morris is a friendly, energetic and enthusiastic group who enjoy dancing together and taking their dances to a variety of audiences.

Home tour, dancing in Windsor with our guests:

Mabel Gubbins a rapper sword team based in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, near Oxford

Gog Magog based in Cambridge, who perform their own not-so-traditional style of brightly-coloured, geometric, high energy molly dancing

Hastings RX who are a Cotswold Morris Dancing team.

11.00-11.45 – at the corner of Peascod Street and William Street, SL4 1DE
12.00-13.00 – outside the Two Brewers on Park Street, SL4 1LB
14.00-14.45 – the Guildhall/Prince Harry Pub, High Street, SL4 1PB
15.00-15.45 – next to the Sir Christopher Wren Hotel, Thames Street,  SL4 1PX
16.00-16.30 – final dance spot next to The Boatman pub, Thames Side,  SL4 1QN

Taster Sessions

Every autumn, we run free evening taster sessions so you too can come along and find out what it’s all about. The dates this year are 18th and 25th Sept and 2nd Oct from 2000 to 2200.

You can find us at the Gardeners Hall, St Leonards Rd, Windsor, SL4 3DR.

Please contact us for further details or if you would like to come along.

About Windsor Morris

As our name suggests, we are based in Windsor, home to the magnificent castle, one of the King’s main residences, which is portrayed in our logo.

The side was founded in 1974, which makes us one of the longest established women’s morris teams in the country.

We are a friendly, energetic and enthusiastic group who enjoy dancing together and taking our dances to a variety of audiences. We get together every week, on a Wednesday evening, to practice, teach new dancers and musicians, and invent new dances.

Our dances are based on the styles performed at the end of the nineteenth century in the Cotswold villages of Badby and Brackley. We perform to the lively music of the melodeon, accompanied by an uplifting drumbeat. We have adapted these styles to provide an exciting spectacle and aim to dance in a lively and energetic manner. We also like to create new dances - like our predecessors, we are keeping morris dancing alive by adapting it.

In 2005 we adopted a new ‘Tradition’ (style of dance steps and figures), based on Minneapolis-on-Charles, a style developed by The Commonwealth Morris Men in the USA. We first saw them dance it at the Marlboro Morris Ale in 1983 and learned the details from Tim Radford at an Advanced Morris Weekend some twenty years later! In homage to the original, we call it Windsor-on-Thames. 

In May 2024 a group from the team went to USA to take part in the Marlboro Morris Ale once again where there were many teams gathered for a weekend of dance.

Windsor Morris joined a morris get-together at Marlboro College near Brattleboro in Vermont over the May Bank Holiday weekend. It’s a little-known fact that morris is flourishing in North America, having been introduced by English folklore activists in the early 20th century.

The Marlboro ‘Ale’ is an annual event seeing a multitude of American teams touring local towns and beauty spots, and a couple of teams from England are always invited to join in the fun. With the other English guest team, Berkshire Bedlam from Wokingham, Windsor Morris toured with teams from Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire, and then performed with all the other guests in front of delighted audiences at Brattleboro and Newfane.

It was Windsor’s sixth visit to the event, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the English visitors were delighted as ever by the generous hospitality of the American teams.

In summer we perform at venues in and around Windsor and further afield at festivals, and as guests of other Morris sides. We have local Windsor tours planned for 14th September.  Check out our programme on www.windsormorris.org.uk for more details. 

We are easily spotted in our sparkling white kit, featuring a green and white rosette plus a splash of colour from our green, red and yellow arm ribbons.  Watch out for our ‘Fools’, who act as our MCs and can give us a noisy whack with the bladder if we step out of line - Cherry, with the Round Tower hat, and Sally, given to punning limericks.

All images courtesy Ben Potton.