There are newspaper accounts of the dance taking place in 1850 which also includes references to it having taken place in 1832, 1814 and 1794 and the account also states that many of those who remembered the dance in 1796 wee told by their fathers that before then the dance took place almost annually. This would appear to confirm John Leyland's reference in The Memorials of Abram to expenditure of 6s in 1737 on a Town's staff and Truncheon which he supposed was carried before the Town's dignitaries at "the annual Morris dance". Though the best known descriptions of the Abram Morris Dancers and their Maypole date from 1880, the Ordnance Survey map of 1846 records the existence of the plot of land in Park Lane known as the Morris Dancers’ Ground. This is adjacent to May Pole House, a farm that took its name from the dancers’ Maypole. When a coal pit was opened on Park Lane in 1895, it was named Maypole Colliery because of its proximity to the Morris Dancers’ Ground. The customary use of the Park Lane plot for the erection of a Maypole and Morris dancing around it almost certainly dates back to the eighteenth century (or earlier) and the tradition in Abram may be contemporary with the Maypoles in other Lancashire towns and villages. Interestingly there are no records of the dance ever having taken place on, or even about, May Day. The traditional time for the Morris Dance is at the end of June or in early July. This coincides with the local Wakes Week.