Collections available on this website, or elsewhere linked from this website.

List collections

Alex Helm amassed a very large and diverse collection of published and unpublished references to all seasonal customs, especially folk plays, including fieldwork notes (mainly through correspondence). The collection includes materials from his colleagues in the indexing scheme.Read more

Dave Bathe amassed a large collection of published material on the mummers’ play in Derbyshire, including the results of newspaper searches, and he conducted extensive fieldwork, contacting informants through newspaper appeals. Read more

Derek Schofield conducted research on mummers’ plays in Staffordshire during the 1980s. This involved collecting all known written references, newspaper searches and fieldwork resulting from newspaper appeals. A particular focus of the research was the traditional group, the Uttoxeter Guisers...Read more

Collected information from Cheshire and its surrounding counties with main focus on the plays and related seasonal customs of Cheshire, with a particular interest in the Alderley Mummers Play.  Includes recorded interviews, archival and contemporary film and photographs plus an attempt to...Read more

Eddie Cass’s interest in traditional drama came after he was a warded his doctorate. In 1997, he saw again the Midgley Pace-egg play, and quickly assimilated previous scholarship in folk drama and contacted other researchers in the field. He concentrated at first on the pace-egg plays and...Read more

Inspired by Herbert Halpert, John Widdowson began to collect folklore in Newfoundland in 1962, and became particularly interested in traditional drama.Read more

The James Madison Carpenter Collection is a major collection of traditional song and drama, plus some items of traditional instrumental music, dance, custom, narrative and children's folklore, from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the USA, documented in the period 1927-55.Read more

Papers of Maurice Willmore Barley (1909-1991), Professor of Archaeology, University of Nottingham; 1937-1975.Read more

Percy Manning’s collection includes a small, but significant collection of information about mummers’ plays from in an around Oxfordshire, including some early photographs. Read more

Peter Millington's Nottinghamshire collection is hosted on the 'Master Mummers' websiteRead more

During a period of over 40 years, Ron Shuttleworth has amassed an enormous collection of copies of all known references to mummers’ plays throughout Britain and Ireland. The collection became the ‘Morris Ring Archive on Folk Plays and Mumming’, and is now housed in the Special Collections...Read more

Tape recordings of interviews conducted in the Sheffield area, North Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, with edited transcriptions; field notebooks, newspaper cuttings, manuscripts and correspondence. Folk drama material relates to the following performance customs: Old Tup, Old Horse, Jolly Minering...Read more

The collection of Thomas Fairman Ordish papers represent the first systematic collection of traditional folk drama materials in England. The period covered is 1886 to 1923. The collection comprises about 670 records on British and Irish folk plays, and now arranged in county order.Read more