Lucy Etheldred Broadwood
Reproduced by permission of
Surrey History Centre
History
The Broadwood Morris Men take their name from The Broadwood Family and in
particular Lucy Etheldred Broadwood (1858-1929), a founder member of the Folk
Song Society.
The Broadwood family were famous piano makers – Beethoven and Chopin both played
on Broadwoods. The family was musical in other ways – in the 19th Century the
Rev John Broadwood published the first ever collection of folk songs entitled
“Songs of the Peasantry of the Surrey & Sussex Weald”. His niece Lucy Etheldred
Broadwood (1858-1929) was also musically gifted and collected folk songs. For
part of her life she lived in the family home of Lyne House, two miles north of
the village of Rusper in north Sussex and employed her talents in the
Surrey/Sussex region. Lucy was a prominent member of the English Folk Song
Society, sometimes its Secretary and sometimes Editor of the society’s Journal.
Her friend, neighbour and contemporary folklorist Ralph Vaughan Williams
commented that “she was England’s greatest folk music scholar”.
The late Harry Mousdell, who was thinking of establishing a morris side in Horsham,
discovered a letter dated 20th December 1925 from Lucy to a Mr McDermott,
in which she writes about Henry Burstow, the Horsham folk singer,
bellringer and cobbler. The letter also mentions seeing a man dancing at Lyne
House on May Day in the early 1870’s. She writes “Later, I realised I had seen
my one and only Sussex Morris – caperer”.
When the new side were formed they needed a name and the local name of
Broadwood, with its folk connections, was an obvious choice.
Martyn Wyndham Read (the internationally well known folk singer) at that time lived on
the Broadwood estate. He arranged for Harry and another original member Ian Hill
to visit Captain Evelyn Henry Tschudi Broadwood, the last surviving member of
the family in this country, in early 1972 - to seek his consent to using the
name and family crest. Capt. Broadwood readily agreed because he believed that
his Aunt Lucy had not received all due credit and recognition for her
contribution to English Folk Music. Thus the Broadwood Morris Men proudly bear
the name and badge of a very important contributor to the continuance of folk
traditions in this country.
On May Day that year the men were invited to Lyne House to take tea and cucumber
sandwiches with Capt. Broadwood on the lawn in front of the house, and they
danced especially for him. Sadly he died soon after but it's our tradition to go
back to the house every May Day and dance for the present inhabitants (it is now
split into flats) and they kindly provide refreshments for us, including
cucumber sandwiches.
Lucy and other members of the family are buried in the churchyard of Rusper
Church (at the back, around the corner to the left), and there at least two
plaques commemorating the family in the church. On the left as you go in, on the
back wall, is a plaque to Lucy showing her as a fairly young woman. It is the
tradition of the Broadwood Men on every Mayday morning for the current Squire to
hang a garland of flowers over the plaque and say a few words in her memory.