legends · 4 min read ·
Friday Dance
A village hall caretaker finds the hall used every Friday for a dance that began in 1957.
**POSTER (found in the hall store, 2019, faded)**
**ASHGROVE VILLAGE HALL**
**GRAND FRIDAY DANCE**
*Music by the Starlight Trio. Dancing 8 till late. Admission 2/6. Refreshments.*
*Ladies a plate, please.*
**Friday 19th April 1957**
· · ·
**Hall committee minutes (Ashgrove Village Hall Trust, 7 October)**
Item 4: **Bookings.** The Treasurer reported that the hall is let for the following: yoga (Mondays), Women's Institute (Tuesdays), parish council (first Wednesday), bingo (Thursdays). Fridays are not let. The Chair asked why. The Treasurer said that no-one has ever asked.
Item 5: **Caretaker's report.** Mr. Dobbs reported that the hall is found ready for dancing every Saturday morning. Chairs stacked. Floor swept. A smell of beer and perfume. Dust on the stage and the footprints of dancers on the boards.
· · ·
**Caretaker's letter (R. Dobbs to the Chair, 14 October)**
Dear Mrs. Hallett,
You asked me to put it in writing. I have been caretaker twenty-two years. In that time I have locked up the hall every night at ten. On Fridays I lock up at five, and go home, and on Saturdays I open up at eight.
Every Saturday, the hall has been used. The floor is scuffed, the chairs are out and put back in a different order, and there is lipstick on the glasses in the kitchen. The glasses are our own, washed and put away. Someone has been cleaning up after them.
I asked Mrs. Pike in the village, and she said: "The Friday dance has been going since the war."
· · ·
**Caretaker's letter (R. Dobbs, 21 October)**
Dear Mrs. Hallett,
I stayed on Friday night. I know I should not have. I told Mrs. Dobbs I'd gone to see to the boiler. I left the car at the chapel and walked back in the dark and let myself into the hall with my own key and sat in the cloakroom, with the door ajar.
At eight o'clock exactly there was a sound outside. Not footsteps. A sort of swishing and creaking like a lot of people coming up the path in good shoes. The doors opened. There was no key. They simply opened, as they do for a visitor who is expected.
I could hear them come in. I could hear a murmur, soft, as at a wedding. And then a piano struck up, a light, tinkling tune, and a drum, and I heard the floor take their weight.
· · ·
I looked through the gap. The hall was lit. Not by our lights, which were off, but by a yellow glow like candles, though there were no candles. The hall was full. Men in dark suits and women in full skirts, young, and quite ordinary, and perfectly happy. They danced a slow foxtrot and a quickstep. The Starlight Trio was on the stage, a pianist, a drummer, a man with a saxophone.
I counted a hundred and forty-one dancers. I noticed they cast no shadow on the floor.
I noticed that none of them looked at me. They looked at one another, with their eyes bright, and their mouths smiling, and every single face had the same set to it, a politeness, a patience, the face of a person who knows that the dance will be over soon.
· · ·
**Caretaker's letter (R. Dobbs, 28 October)**
Dear Mrs. Hallett,
I have sat in the cloakroom on three Fridays now, and I think I understand. The dance ends at eleven. At eleven the lights dim and the band plays a last waltz, and the dancers begin to leave, one by one, by the double doors.
None of them goes out. I have watched. They go towards the doors, and they thin, and are gone. And at each of those departures the whole hall seems to sigh, and a little of the glow goes with them.
The last to go is always a young woman in a pale dress, who dances alone. She stops at the door and looks back at the empty floor. Then she goes. And the lights go out. I stay in the dark for a while, and then I switch on the torch, and I let myself out.
· · ·
**Poster (new, pinned to the hall noticeboard, Saturday 1 November)**
**ASHGROVE VILLAGE HALL**
**GRAND FRIDAY DANCE**
*Music by the Starlight Trio. Dancing 8 till late. Admission free. Refreshments.*
*All welcome. Ladies a plate, please. Gentlemen, a partner.*
**Friday 7th November 2026**
*It is typed on an old typewriter, on yellowed card, and it is signed in the corner, in ink, by the committee: Chair, Treasurer, Secretary, Caretaker.*
*The signatures are all in a hand the Chair says is her own.*