… from the Wychwoods Albums Archive
Lt Tiddy was born at Margate in 1880, the son of a headmaster, and came to live in Ascott at Priory Cottage with his father and brother. A fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, he was the first secretary of the Oxford branch of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. He was a colleague of Cecil Sharpe, the English folk song collector who often came to Ascott and who would pay a shilling for a song.
Reggy Tiddy brought about a revival of Morris dancing in Ascott and in 1912 he built the Tiddy Hall which has a special sprung floor for dancing. The team was much in demand for fetes and garden parties at the big houses in the neighbourhood like Cornbury, Bruern Abbey and Lee Place.
In 1914 Reggy Tiddy enlisted with the 4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and was killed as a Lieutenant at Laventie on 10 August, 1916, aged 36 years. He is affectionately remembered on a plaque in the Hall.
In 1965 Mrs Doris Warner wrote her ‘Personal Memories’ of her life in Ascott. In it she described the clothes worn by the dancers as she remembered them as a child.
The women wore ‘dresses with tight bodices, full skirts, white spotted muslin dutch bonnets and fichus, and had their hair in two long plaits with matching ribbons in their hair and on their shoes. The men had white flannels with coloured baldrics and bells on their legs. The girls wore flowered-print dresses and matching sunbonnets and the boys had holland smocks with wide hats and red scarves’. Mrs Warner died in 1986. In the photograph Reggy Tiddy stands watching the children.
This is one of series of snapshots taken from the Society’s publications “The Wychwoods Albums”. These publications from the mid to late 1980s feature a variety of images of the Wychwoods, all of which deserve a place in our expanding online archive.
Select from:
WW1 Wychwoods Military | WW1 Wychwoods Memorabilia | Shipton WW1 Miscellany | St Michael’s Shipton Early 1900s | Early Prebendal Scenes| Shipton Court 1930s | Milton Scenes Early 1900s | Milton Social Activities | Farming Activities and People | Ascott Early 1900s | Leafield 1900s – 1930s | Fifield Residents Early 1900s | Idbury Early 1900s | Lyneham Miscellany| WW2 Evacuees | WW2 Wychwoods Home Front| WW2 Victory Celebrations|The First Wychwood Album
