The club was started by Bunny and Sorrel Nunn who lived in Oxhey and their resident group was The Overlanders who later became the Herga Singers. The members of this group were Bob & Mary Wood, Bob Wakeling and Ron Nunn. Bunny and the Herga Singers ran the club from March 1963 until July 1966. Bunny, Sorrel and the Herga Singers were great supporters of the Woodcraft Folk and all profits derived from the club during that early period were donated to that source and there were even WoodcraftHerga Club folk weekends, which were very successful. In 1966 they felt that they had done their stint 3 years was a big enough commitment and they put in place 2 people on the door, namely myself and Max SewellRutter. We were asked to organise the club and the Dipper family, Colin, Andrew, Barry with Jackie Hersey and the Jug Trust were the residents. The Jug Trust and Max soon gave up their commitment and by December 1966 I was running the club with the Dipper family as residents. Life was a little bit hairy at the time in 1966 I was earning the princely sum of £6 per week and running a folk club with guest commitments of £8£20 per week. For some reason this did not seem to worry me even though initially, after taking over the money left to us by the old club, this had virtually gone by Christmas 1966. We had a make or break evening with Steve Benbow on the first Monday in December 1966 it was a disaster and I thought that this was the end of the club, but what I had overlooked, was that the majority of the club members during the Autumn of 1966 had gone to University and the following Monday for an open evening the club was absolutely heaving with the return perforers such as Kitty Green Vernon, Mack, Cat & Dai etc etc. In February 1967 I had another make or break evening. I booked the New Lost City members Mike Seeger, Tracy Schwartz & Tom Paley and I increased the admission charge from half a crown to 76 a massive jump in those days. 197 people filled the room, I took £73.176 i.e. I was £1.2s.6d short and from then on the club went from strength to strength. I can only think of a few key members at the present time Colin & Andrew Dipper, the Jug Trust, Bob Williams, Nick Robertshaw, Sue & Dave Tippen, Geoff and Joy Lakeman, Paddy McEvoy, Hugh Rippon and for a short period of time, Paul Brady. In later years also Jim Mageean, Ani Fentiman, Dave Webber, Johnny Collins, Kevin Shiels & Tim Edwards. The club was popular, and in fact we took over 100 people to Sidmouth for the next 2 or 3 years. It was in 1969 or 1970 that we all went to a morris practice and from this the Herga Morris was formed. From Herga Morris came Flowers of May, came White Thorn Morris, came Benskins Morris, came Chiltern Hundreds. From club members we managed to produce artists of the calibre of Sam, Seth and Sean Lakeman, Saul Rose and Andy Cutting. The club had always held quarterly ceilidhs, usually at Oxhey Pavilion and I started the monthly cilidhs at the Whittington in Pinner probably in 19681969. From then on the monthly Pinner ceilidhs prospered until about 1975. At one stage, having started Haddenham in 1972, I was involved in running a Friday night ceilidh in Pinner and a Saturday night ceilidh in Haddenham and often had the same bands. Dave Puplett took over the Pinner ceilidhs and these came to an end 2 or 3 years later Haddenham continued. The funds of the folk club were able to support Haddenham in its early days and once Haddenham was well established, then funds from Haddenham were able to support Herga for many years. This enabled us to book guests far more expensive than the club could really afford, and enabled the club to retain its guestopen evenings on a regular basis.

Address: Pinner Green Social Club, Rickmansworth Road, Pinner, Middlesex HA5 3TJ
Telephone: 07973-343 027
Website: http://folk4all.net/HergaIndex.htm