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Interesting Roytonians James (Jimmy) Coleman 1885-1970 James Coleman was the leader of the Royton Morris Dancers for
over sixty years. Born into an Irish immigrant family in Hollinwood, he attended
school in the Lees/Mossley area before settling in Royton in the early 1890s.
Morris dancing has an exotic history and originally consisted of male dancers
accompanying the rushcarts to the church at wakes time. By the 1890s it had
become a struggling street dance tradition carried out by a few teams of men in
selected mill towns. In about 1891 Jimmy and his elder brother Michael (Mick)
Coleman, a noted clog dancer, raised a team in Royton, practising at the Hope
and Anchor Inn. Mick left and went to live in Failsworth where he later trained
up a team of boys and featured in a folk dance book. James Cheetham carried on
in Royton as ‘conductor’, with the help of concertina player Lees Kershaw, their
headquarters being at the Unicorn and Duke of Wellington pubs, until he also
moved on and went to live in Oldham where he trained a rival team. This left the
young Jimmy Coleman to become ‘conductor’ of the Royton team sometime after
1906. This team composed of other Irish catholic families, the largest of which
was the MacDermotts. However, tensions arose between the two families over
‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’ and the MacDermotts briefly formed their own team
at the Commercial Inn on Middleton Road, while Coleman’s team met at the Church
Inn, on the opposite side of the road. Jimmy Coleman considered the MacDermott’s
team (named the ‘reds’ after the colour of their knee breeches) to be no more
than buskers, whilst his team (the ‘blues’) carried on the traditional style of
morris dancing. Eventually they re-united under Coleman just before the First
World War. Morris Dancers in those days danced at the Wakes holidays (the
second week in August in Royton) and at neighbouring town’s Wakes holidays and
other Saturday venues during the summer. Often the dancers would dance all the
way to Manchester dressed in breeches, ribbons and clogs, all the while twirling
cotton rope ‘slings’ to the beat of drums and the strains of a concertina band.
They would return via tram to count up and distribute money collected during the
day. At Wakes time they would dance all the way to Blackpool, sleeping in
haystacks and, after collecting a fortune on the Pier, would enjoy a train
journey back. It was either that or more haystacks and sore feet before they
arrived home! The Great War, along with the growth of motor traffic on the
roads, almost destroyed morris dancing with many of the dancers being killed or
gassed in the trenches. Coleman briefly trained a boys’ team at the Dog and
Partridge pub but this disbanded in the early 1920s. It was not until the late
twenties when local road sweeper Fred Day contacted Maude Karpeles, an English
Folk Dance Society pianist, that the team was revived with the help of E.F.D.S.
money. However this money was soon drunk away, much to the frustration of the
English Folk Dance Society, who then had to raise fresh cash. Karpeles made
Coleman a household name in Folk circles and mentioned him and his dance in her
‘Lancashire Morris Dance’ book, but he continued to exasperate the Society. In
1935 the Royton Morris Dancers won an ‘All England Folk Dancing Championship’ at
the Royal Albert Hall with new concertina player Ellis Marshall and what Jimmy
Coleman called “the dance routine” became one of the celebrated Morris Dances of
England. Coleman’s dancers however, were criticised for being too fond of beer,
low speech, slovenly dress and habits. Coleman revived the team again after the Second World War with
the reluctant help of Royton UDC (which warned of the potential financial
consequences), and Jimmy’s son Norman raised a boys’ team in the 1950s and 60s.
After Jimmy’s death Norman helped to raise another team which lasted until 1983. James Coleman was remembered as an irascible man who once
broke a collecting box over the nose of a critical spectator. He fell out with
the folk dance crowd and famously locked ‘folkies’ out of his practices at Byron
Street School. However Coleman, for a long-time a cop packer at the Roy Mill, in
his own inimitable way helped to put Royton on the folk dancing map. Main Sources: Coleman, MacDermott, Cheetham family memories,
former dancers, Ellis Marshall, Census records, newspaper obituaries, Royton UDC
school records. Michael Higgins
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