There were no performances of the dance
after 1901, although Maypole dancing is recorded in about 1913. There are
also records of a girls team dancing processional Morris during the fund
raising Gala Days during the First World War. The first trainer of
these girls teams was a man named McMasters who came over to Abram by bike
from either Hindley or Westhoughton. These girls teams
continued to dance in Abram for many years, particularly at the Rose Queen
festivals, trained by an Abram girl, Lydia MacNamara. William Wright's sister-in-law danced in one of the early teams
and one of Peter Grimshaw's grand-daughters was a member of a later team,
trained by a Mr Wogan and accompanied on concertina by Bill Lawton who
lived in Warrington Road at the top end of Abram
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In 1922, 21 years after the last recorded
performance, the dance failed to take place. A local farmer, Mr J. T.
Rigby wrote to Abram
Urban District Council about preserving the Morris Dancers' Ground. After
several meetings and reports, four concrete posts were fixed to mark the
boundary of the land in July 1924 and are clearly marked on the Ordnance
Survey map of 1929.The council last inspected these posts
in 1932 on the occasion of the annual inspection of roads.
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In 1931 Maud Karpeles obtained the notation
of the dance from Richard Porter of Hindley who had learned the dance from
an old Abram dancer several years previously. Richard Porter's handwritten
notation describes it as "Old English Morris Dance" and says it
is 100 years old and it also mentions Adam Ingram with the date 1883.
Richard Porter died shortly after Maud Karpeles' visit.
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In the autumn of 1932 members of the local
EFDSS branches in Liverpool and Manchester were active in carrying out
research on behalf of Maud Karpeles who directed their enquiries by post
from her home in London. A great deal of correspondence passed between
these tireless workers and various members of Abram Urban District Council
and the Wigan Coal Corporation and an exploratory visit to Abram was made
by the staff of the Liverpool office of EFDSS. In November 1932 Maud
Karpeles herself visited Abram and met Adam Ingram and others from the
1901 performance. Shortly afterwards her description of the dance was
published in the Journal of the EFDSS, with one or two omissions and
mistakes in the notation which were not corrected for some time
afterwards.
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John Leyland's description of the Morris Dancers Ground was
regularly published at the front of the pocket diaries
produced by Abram UDC and in 1976 Cllr. William Wright, a former Chairman
of the Council and son-in-law of one of the 1901 team applied for the
Morris Dancers Ground to be registered as Common Land, having previously
had it awarded village green status. As a Pit Deputy at the Maypole
Colliery he had already prevented the mineral railway lines being laid
across the Morris Dancers Ground.
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