Halsway Manor Society

Halsway Manor Society

Halsway Manor, Somerset, is England's National Centre for Traditional Music, Dance and Song. It is the only residential folk centre in the UK. Halsway provides an extensive range of residential folk music courses including dance, music tuition and singing.

The Halsway Manor Society Ltd was incorporated in May 1965, its purpose is to promote and preserve traditional English folk dance, music and song and to operate Halsway Manor as a residential centre to that end. It is a registered charity.

http://www.halswaymanor.co.uk/

Halsway Manor houses the Kennedy Grant Library, a multimedia collection of folklore, customs, traditional music, dance and song from around the world. Its strength is in the English tradition particularly of the south west. There are over 3,000 items consisting of books, pamphlets, journals, cassettes, records, CDs, DVDs, videos, artifacts, archives, the William Winter manuscript of tunes and the Ruth Tongue collection. Originally named after Margaret Grant, the first branch organiser of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in the south west, the library was housed in Exeter and moved to Halsway in 1965, the year the Manor became a folk centre. The library's name was changed in January 2007 when the Society received the gift of Peter Kennedy's library of some 11,000 items.