- Date: Monday, 12 January 2026
- Time: 9.00 pm‐10.00 pm
- Location: Royal Oak
- Address: High Green, Great Ayton, TS9 6BW
Enjoy a preformance by Leven Sword of the traditional Cleveland Fool Plough Play on Plough Monday.
Leven Sword will be performing the traditional Cleveland Fool Plough Play in The Royal Oak, Great Ayton at 9:00pm on Plough Monday (12th January 2026). The play is recorded in J. Horsfall Turner’s ‘Yorkshire Anthology, Ballads and Songs, Ancient and Modern’ published in 1901.
The local plough stots were mentioned by J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, who wrote in ‘Cleveland Villages’ in 1938, in the past:
“Ayton possessed a team of plough stots, young men who, taking the place of the oxen (stot denotes a young ox) and drawing the plough in procession on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Day, the Feast of the Epiphany, were accompanied by sword dancers and a band of musicians and collected money for the feasting which was to follow and which marked the close of the Christmas holiday”.
So come and watch our sword dancers and join our band of musicians in a song and dance session after the play. We will be collecting in aid of Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team rather than for feasting!
Leven Sword will also be out on Saturday 10th January dancing on High Green at 3pm followed by performing the play inside The Royal Oak at 4pm.