About us and Our History
by Barbara McQuillan :)
Who we are
Please see the Contacts page for our current committee.
We are a friendly club devoted to Scottish country dancing. There are many other clubs like ours around the UK and throughout the world where people can socialise and dance. The Royal Scottish Country Dance Association (RSCDS) is in overall charge of protecting and promoting the standards, and we are affiliated to it via the RSCDS Berks/Hants/Surrey Border Branch. See the Links section for more details of these organisations and the history of Scottish Country Dancing.
The club has always catered for a general standard with a special welcome to beginners. The club is a small but growing one with typically two sets dancing.
Chairman’s Report for the year ending May 2007
The past year has been a good one for the club. The socials at Halloween and Christmas were very successful. Burns Night was on his actual birthday this year and we had a great time with the piping in of the haggis and reading his poems. Some of us also did a demonstration dance at Lynwood in Sunningdale which was greatly appreciated by the residents there.
We are starting organising dances again beginning with the Start of Season Dance next September. The Summer dancing at Frimley will include the dances from the programme and I hope you can come along. And I’d like to announce now that the year after next will be club’s 50th anniversary so we will be doing some preparation for that next year.
We have gone from being an endangered club to one that is small but growing. We have had two sets for a fair proportion of evenings. Let’s see if we can do as well again next year with advertising the club and trying to make new members welcome. And on that note may I say welcome to our new members who have joined us this year, it is good having you with us.
To end with, I would like to say a special thanks to the committee for all the various things they have done throughout the year for the club. And thanks to everyone who contributed to the socials, which is everyone actually! It is you all coming along to talk and dance that makes coming to the club so enjoyable.
History
The club has had a varied history and our records are very incomplete. The following is my best current reconstruction. We would be very grateful for any contributions on the club’s history or corrections to what is here.
The official date of the club’s founding is July 1959 when the ‘Bracknell and District Caledonian Society’ had its inaugural meeting. It was affiliated with the Burns Federation rather than the RSCDS. The club had its early meetings on Thursday evenings at Bullbrook Community Centre. For anyone who can remember pre-decimalisation prices members were charged 1/6d and non-members 2s an evening. The first committee was:
Hon President: The Lord Forres
President: Mr A Porteus
Vice President: Mr F J Kilpatrick
Secretary/Treasurer: Mr Brown
Social Governor: Mr A Dougall
M.C: Mr H Campbell
Publicity Organizer: Mr E Briggs
Committee Members: Mr J McKenzie, Mrs H Hyde, Mrs Holmes
A notable new committee member in October 1960 was Mr W. Forbes who was asked to join because of his “dancing (Scottish) knowledge”. It was another five years before the minutes loosened up enough to refer to him as Bill Forbes.
In 1962 the club affiliated with the RSCDS, it left the Burns Federation at the same time.
Another source for the club was an informal group for dancing that started up in the late 1950’s. They met at the Wellington Hotel in Crowthorne. In 1963 they went to meet there one night and couldn’t get in because of policemen all around the hotel. There was a big scandal which was in all the papers - strippers from London and Air Chiefs etc. The hotel closed shortly afterwards and houses were built on the site. Most of the people there, including Marie Bennett and her husband who were running it, joined the Bracknell club.
The club later had its meetings at the Wellington Country Club, then Sebastians Memorial Hall (where St Johns now meet), and then at Easthampstead Parish Centre for ten years, before settling on its current location at Birch Hill Community Centre in 1979.
A few years ago a number of members left for another club and often there would only be one set. Recently the numbers have started to grow again which gives the dancing a much better 'buzz'. Beginners are very welcome and will find other people who have also recently joined.
David McQuillan