Our Charitable Work

Previous beneficiaries of Old Glory donations are shown below. Thank you to all who donated to help these worthy causes over the years

• Middleton Primary School

• Marie Curie Cancer Research Foundation

• The Southwold Christmas Lights

• Southwold Sailors’ Reading Room Association

• The Long Shop Museum Trust, Leiston

• The Print Museum, Beccles

• Rumburgh & St Michael's Village Hall

• Macmillan Cancer Relief (Lowestoft)

• The Sirapite Restoration Appeal, Leiston

• Wrentham Historical Society

• Southwold Primary School

• Bungay Guides and Brownies

• Whittlesea Straw Bear

• Middleton Village Hall

• Southwold Museum

• Bardwell Windmill Restoration

• Rumburgh Children’s Christmas Party

• Rumburgh with South Elmham All Saints, St. Michael and St. Felix Church

• Cancer Research UK

• The East Anglian Air Ambulance

• St. Elizabeth Hospice

• Multiple Sclerosis Society

• St. Margaret South Elmham Village Hall

• The N.S.P.C.C.

• The World Land Trust

• Big Dog Ferry, Beccles

• Halesworth Area Community Transport

• The Royal National Lifeboat Institution

• Suffolk Accident Rescue Service

• The Seagull Theatre, Pakefield, Lowestoft

• YANA (rural and farm workers’ mental health charity

• Emmaus (Norfolk & Waveney)

• Waveney Foodbank

• Horse Sense Wirral (horse sanctuary)

Old Glory Molly Dancers & Musicians continue to reimagine an ancient East Anglian tradition whereby agricultural labourers would take to dancing outside local pubs during the coldest winter months when work was scarce, begging, often with menaces, for cash, beer and bread to sustain them.

In the days when begging was a criminal offence, the dancers wore heavy disguise – soot on their faces, their jackets turned inside out and adorned with ribbons of fabric - for fear of the Lord of the Manor identifying them and thus withholding his largesse, or even evicting them from their tied cottage.

Fortunately, nowadays there is less dependence on the bread line keeping the wolf from the door, and so monetary offerings from the generous public are donated to predominantly local charities.

Old Glory’s last season saw six donations of £500 each being given to:

• Rumburgh Church chancel repair appeal

• St Elizabeth Hospice

• Lighthouse Women’s Aid

• Emmaus (Norfolk and Waveney), Ditchingham

• Norfolk and Suffolk 4X4 Response

• ‘It’s On The Ball’ testicular cancer charity, a charity also supported by The Rumburgh Buck, Old Glory’s spiritual home.

If we are ever privileged enough to have you in our audience, look out for our Box Man who will move silently amongst you, fixing you with his steely glare, whilst presenting his collection box to drop a few coins into. Notes gratefully accepted too, but despair ye not if you carry no cash - our box is fitting with a new-fangled device that accepts something called payment cards.

Please give generously to support those in need.

In memory of our former Box Man, Baz