Geoff Hughes had carried out extensive research from printed sources and visits to local residents. These included William Wright, former Chairman of Abram UDC and son-in-law of one of the 1901 dancers, who had already ensured the preservation of the Morris Dancers Ground, Olga Pimblett who was born in 1906 and had lived in the same house opposite the bottom end of Park Lane all her life and had known many of the 1901 dancers as she grew up. She was an amazing source of local knowledge and clearly remembered the girl Morris dancers who danced in the local carnivals during the First World War. Practices were held on Tuesday evenings in May on the car park of the Red Lion Inn under the mystified gaze of people walking along the adjoining canal towpath. We had eight dancers and one musician at the first practice but numbers increased over the next couple of practices until we had a total of 13 dancers and 2 musicians. None of the dancers had done the dance before, in fact some had never even danced before but after 4 weeks practice we managed to put on a respectable display. One of the new dancers, Steve Froggatt, took a copy of the 1901 photograph and produced a copy of the maypole complete with pewter (not silver) teapot. The first performance of the Abram Morris Dance since 1901 on the Morris Dancers' Ground, Park Lane, Abram, took place at 11.00am on Saturday May 26th, 1984. The dancers wore black trousers, white shirts, red or blue ties, blue sashes edged with pink, red, white and blue rosettes and straw boaters trimmed with red, white and blue hat bands. After dancing on the Morris Dancers' Ground we danced outside William Wright's house in May Avenue and then danced at other sites in Abram, had lunch in The Buck's Head Public House before continuing our perambulation of Abram, finishing back at the Red Lion Inn at 3pm. back to top