Our Story

Wild Beginnings

Wild Oats Morris was formed in July 2003 after Tess and Sally had been watching the Border sides at Upton and decided they wanted to do it too. The idea was discussed at Sally’s in May 2003 and became a properly constituted Wild Oats Border Morris side in Jan 2004. The name took several months to agree as we wanted some way of being wild, noisy, irrepressible and colourful - easier when we were 20 years younger! Kit was broadly agreed as colourful, striped tights were an early choice, but Siggy wore a turquoise leotard!

Dancing in 2006

Early Days...

The first dancers were Tess, Sally, Ava, Sherry, Siggy, Ali Humphries and Jim with Geryl as our first musician. Mel joined us a few weeks later. Andy Scarf taught us the first dance but as everyone was struggling to learn it Sally wrote Ready Brek. Tess and Siggy wrote Milkwall Mooch and later the Trafalgar dance.

Dances were also learnt from Jim Brown whose wife Geryl played the accordion for us. Tess played the fiddle, and later Alison Bruce did too. We started going to workshops; most notably at Madcap Mike’s in Malvern on cold December days, after which Sally wrote more dances using the steps we had learnt. As we became more proficient Ava started teaching us whole dances from workshops she’d attended at festivals, quite a few from Chippenham, and we developed a list of 30+ dances.

First Dances Out!

We danced at the Newent Onion Fayre dated September 2004, dancing Bloody Awful! Tess, Siggy, Jim, Mel, Tim and me with Geryl playing. We were a riot of colour! And we were quite loud in the early days. We also danced at Eric’s Harvest Home in Tibberton, October 2004, although that didn’t go so well! We’ve danced on May Day up on May Hill now and then, sometimes following on to Upton Folk Festival the same day!

The band at the Weston Cross, Herefordshire

Growing Together

We started practicing at the Forge Hammer pub in Cinderford but soon outgrew that space and moved to Drybrook Rugby Football Club in November 2003 with 14 members. In 2015 we had 23 members and although numbers have been up and down we’ve always had a brilliant core and we have some wonderful new members in the last 18 months. Andrew joined us in 2007, as our main musician, but we also have Denis on the guitar and Mel on the accordion, and we’ve had Richard on the banjo occasionally.

Still Going Strong