RSCDS Nottingham Branch

Anthony (Tony) Payne, 1946 – 2025

Tony died at home of oesophageal cancer on New Year’s Day. His dancing career began locally in Eltham, continuing at Cambridge. Graduating there in Classics he taught at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, gained his Full SCD Certificate and co-founded RSCDS Exeter. Through dancing he met Dilys, a pharmaceutical chemist from Wrexham. Tony moved to Loughborough Grammar School and they married in 1974.

Joining Nottingham Branch, Tony became its principal teacher, taking us with expertise and good humour through everything from 18th-century pure figures to McNab’s `Lamont of Inveryne’.

His musicianship at piano and organ, his work with the school’s Naval CCF and his Christian faith as U.R.C. Elder and Street Pastor are remembered with affection and admiration. He leaves Dilys, daughters Melissa and Anna, their husbands Duncan and Matt and grandchildren Joe, Rosie, Ben and Sam.

Anthony (Tony) Payne, 1946 – 2025; an appreciation

How can two men’s lives run in parallel, each unknown to the other, for half a century or more? Both of us Cambridge men and former day pupils at public schools; both of us teachers in Secondary and Primary sectors, Tony teaching Classics at Blundell’s School, Tiverton before a move to Loughborough Grammar School. Both of us musicians and organists, both of us involved in long-haul courtships until, still unknown to each other, we tied our respective knots in Wrexham (Tony & Dilys) and Glasgow (myself & Rhona) on the same day in 1974, Tony and Dilys beating us to the altar by a few hours! And both with Church connections, in the United Reformed Church and Anglo-Catholicism.

Even in the University community in the mid-sixties two men with different interests reading different subjects at different colleges might easily never meet. Whilst Tony was amusing the porters at St. John’s by riding his (man’s) bike in kilt to the Strathspey & Reel Club, gowned after dark lest the Proctor and his bulldogs should impose a six-and-eightpenny fine, I was busy with the Railway Club, the Officers’ Training Corps and Eastern Counties’ elderly buses, so there were opportunities a-plenty for our paths not to cross!

Tony took his degree in 1967 and taught Classics at Blundell’s School, Tiverton and two years later I took mine and eventually followed him into the blackboard jungle. He enjoyed Scottish Country Dancing at Summer School and down in Devon, and collaborated with Naomi Duncan and Sue Tyler in founding Exeter Branch RSCDS. His increasing skills in both Scottish Country Dancing and Highland dancing led to a Full Certificate in SCD, his certificate signed by Miss Jean Milligan herself. It had been a long journey from the Evening Institute at Eltham, where his mother had encouraged him to join their Scottish dance class.

Also on the Exeter dance floor and at Summer School he met a young Welsh lady from Wrexham, qualifying as a pharmaceutical chemist before her post-registration year at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Tony’s move to Loughborough Grammar School brought them closer whereas Rhona and I had to rely upon the GPO, the phone, overnight Glasgow sleepers and the motorways…until two weddings took place on 10th August, 1974!

Tony and Dilys joined Nottingham Branch and he taught classes at all levels until Jenny Bradley’s retirement in 2007 when he became our principal teacher. His enthusiasm for precision and almost geometrical covering when preparing teams for festivals is remembered with appreciation as well as his sense of humour on class nights…and his perseverance when he challenged our dem team to dance `Lamont of Inveryne’ at a regional festival. Dances featuring pure figures were a particular fascination, alongside the occasional quirky features of the early RSCDS books such as the `left petronella’ in `Dumbarton’s Drums’.  He maintained his Exeter connections, too, and led a week’s or a fortnight’s class at Sidmouth for many years.

I didn’t find out about his enthusiasm for sailing with the school’s CCF until he invited us to do `safety boat’ duty at a nearby lake. Again his knowledge was deep but unassuming, and I was glad to be able to send him photographs of sailing drifters and rowing boats taken at a festival in Cellardyke, Fife, while he was still able to enjoy them.

For many years he was a member of the East Midlands Association of Classical Teachers, continuing his interests in Latin and Greek as well as organising and leading visits to sites related to the Roman Empire and the city-states in Greece. He also taught three U3A classes – in Latin, in Classical Greek and in Classical Civilisation.

He and Dilys became deeply-involved members of the Loughborough United Reformed Church and both became Elders. His organ and piano playing – including improvisations – were most impressive, and I was able to hear him to full advantage when he invited me to join the rota of organists soon after the old pipe organ had been replaced by a most versatile three-manual electronic instrument.

Christianity didn’t begin and end at the church doors, though; for many years both Tony and Dilys took on the rôle of Street Pastors in the town, which meant spending nights in support of vulnerable students and engaging with the full range of charitable activities.           David Page

 

Beginners Programme 2024

Nottingham RSCDS are pleased to be able to offer their Beginners’ Programme again during the Autumn Term 2023. The flyer for this programme can be seen above and more details can be found here: https://nottinghamrscds.org/beginners-programme/

ASCDS Festival 2024

The ASCDS Festival on May 11th, at The Elizabethan Academy in Retford, was as fun and worthwhile as ever. 12 sets, representing about 110 dancers, obediently formed in the main hall for the Massed Dances programme when called and stayed disciplined enough not to try to escape up the climbing wall in one corner.

We were glad to practise with Nottingham Scottish Association dancers during the previous month and combine into 1 set for 2 dances. It was also a delight to have dancers who were first-time attenders at the Festival. The afternoon was enhanced by demonstrations from various groups. It was especially good to see less experienced dancers participating in them.

All teachers and leaders are due many thanks and much appreciation. In Nottingham this is for Elizabeth (Branch) and Andrew and Sue (Scottish Association) who set up the teams, did all the logistics and communication and patiently took us through the dances. Thank you so much.

Here’s to May 10th 2025.

Annual Dance 2024

On a lovely sunny evening nearly 40 dancers came from other dance groups in Sheffield, Chesterfield, Leicester, Derby and Newark to join us for our Annual dance at Lowdham Village Hall.  The hall is such a good venue for our dances, it has an excellent floor, and with the fire doors open onto the field behind letting in the glorious sunshine on such a lovely evening, we were all very comfortable. There was plenty of fun, friendship and our shared love of Scottish dancing which kept us all dancing away until we sang Auld Lang Syne before going our separate ways home.

The live music from the Chris Dewhurst Band, aka Chris and his wife Julie on accordians, and son Nick on drums, gave us all such a wonderful lift and kept us light on our feet!  There were some fabulous tunes, the strathspeys were particularly beautiful, and the tempo was perfect as ever.

The miracle of a Bring and Share supper works every time, its amazing – such a lovely variety of finger food to keep us sustained through to the end of the evening, and a chance to chat together at the interval.

Many thanks to everyone who helped to make the evening so special, and to our MCs Elizabeth and David.

Our Centenary Dance 2023

Centenaries have a deplorable habit of making us wait another hundred years for the next one to roll along, so to make the most of the first centenary of the RSCDS the whole Committee has been involved in putting together a programme to show how Scottish Country Dance has evolved since 1923, not only by selecting dances to include new works alongside discoveries culled from centuries-old manuscripts, but also by presenting an inspirational selection of music from the masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the present day.  So `General Stuart’s Reel’ from Bremner’s Collection of 1768, `Machine without Horses’ of 1772 and William Boag’s `Up in the Air’ of 1797, of an age when balloons and sedan chairs were the height of extravagant fashion, take their places alongside twentieth-century celebrations of our foundresses in `Miss Milligan’s Strathspey’ and the reel `Mrs. Stewart of Fasnacloich’. 

Chris Dewhurst and his band will be playing for us, and Chris has kindly agreed to take a few moments from time to time to give honourable mention to some of those to whom music has always meant more than tadpoles on telegraph wires, the supply of a beat for the feet or even a way of earning a modest living, from the earliest days of the `dancies’ with their fiddles to the international company of composers of today.

We all look forward to seeing you on the dance floor at Lowdham on 18th!

David

 

Jenny Bradley, 1930-2023

Branch Award, 2007

 When Mrs. Heggarty of The Grange, the largest of the three houses in the village of Ault Hucknall, invited a demonstration team of Scottish Country Dancers to a party she can have had no inkling of where it would lead for one of her guests. Jenny, who would live in that tiny village on the edge of Derbyshire for all but two of her ninety-three years, was present at that party, and captivated by the dancing.

A scholarship to Chesterfield Girls’ Grammar School and teacher training at Matlock had led to the Headship of Devonshire Infants’ School in Sutton in Ashfield until it closed and she became a supply teacher.

And then she was asked to the party at The Grange…

She joined a W.I. Scottish dance class in nearby Rowthorne before moving on to Mrs. Beckett’s class in Mansfield, and her first experience of teaching dance came after Mrs. Beckett’s retirement from the `Mansfield Ladies’. Along with her great friend Joan Watkinson, later to become Branch Chairman, she joined the RSCDS Nottingham Branch and trained for her Teacher’s Certificate under Margaret Donaldson. Miss Milligan was her examiner for the Full Certificate, and she paused before signing it…

MM: “Is that your baptismal name?”

JB: “Yes, Miss Milligan.” Indeed it was; she was never a Jennifer!

Skill and spatial awareness on the dance floor allied to mental agility led her on to devise her own dances, for which she has long been recognised, perhaps the best-known being the 4 x 24-bar reel `Nottingham Lace’ which is danced all over the world, and the strathspey `James Senior of St. Andrews’, published in Book 42 of the RSCDS collection. She was a major contributor to the collection `Nottingham 10.30’ and her own local publications include the `Oaks of Sherwood’ book, the `Culzean Castle’ collection and the `Gauldry Group’.  After over a quarter of a century as Principal Teacher at Nottingham Branch she was presented with a Branch Award before retiring at the end of the 2006-7 season, and received a letter of thanks from Irene Bennett, then Chairman of the RSCDS.

For many years Jenny and Joan attended RSCDS Summer School in St. Andrews, always following it up with a Scottish holiday. In her retirement Jenny continued to take an active part in the annual local tradition of well-dressing as well as making clothes, knitting jumpers on four needles and solving Sudoku problems until failing eyesight, old age and infirmity took their toll, and she died peacefully in her sleep at the end of February 2023.

Her funeral, in the ancient and intriguing Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist, Ault Hucknall was well attended by her family, her carers and members of the Scottish Country Dance and well-dressing communities.

David Page