The Old Bull Arts Centre And Old Bull Morris Dancers

A Memory of Barnet.

I joined a "side" of clog morris dancers known as The Old Bull" in 1980. We all attended weekly practices and danced out at various local pubs in the area.

Our practice venue was a former pub known as the Old Bull. It was purchased by Barnet Urban District Council in 1963 with a view to demolishing the building and creating an access road to a bypass parallel to Barnet High Street which was destined to become pedestrianised. However this proposal never matured, and the building was inherited by the London Borough of Barnet when the boroughs merged in 1965. It was used as a Civic Defence Centre and the magistrates office before being opened in 1975 as The Old Bull Arts Centre by a local group who had been running a summer festival in nearby Ewen Hall Barnet for a few years. Our side of Morris Dancers was just one of many arts organisations who used the venue.

I still wear my dancing clogs with the Old Bull logo although I have now retired and live in Devon and am no longer fit enough to do the vigorous "north-west" style of clog morris dancing. Instead I join in with the musicians of the Heather and Gorse Clog Morris side in south Devon.