Bledington is a village on the border with Oxfordshire. Charles Benfield was the main informant for the  tunes, most of which were noted by Cecil Sharp at Benfield’s house at Bould (Oxon), a hamlet in Idbury parish about a mile from Bledington (Glos). William and Nancy was also collected by George Butterworth, as well as Trunkles and Ladies of Pleasure, the latter played by Ted Gibbs.
The Travelling Morrice visited Bledington in 1924 and 25 and danced, first to John Hitchman and later to Charles Benfield, several of the dances that had been collected from them and published by Cecil Sharp, Herbert Macilwaine and George Butterworth. This visit led to the collection of a number of dances not published in The Morris Book, some of which, marked RKS* in the index below,  were published by R Kenworthy Schofield, (1934) Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society Vol 1 (3)  pp 147-151, C. Sharp also obtained Old Woman Tossed up from Richard Bond at Icomb. 
Hey Away was noted by AL Peck from George Hathaway in 1929. RK Schofield also noted tunes from George Hathaway in 1937. Two notebooks with the tunes can be examined at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Unfortunately RKS did not always note the date nor the performer.
The same, or similar, dances were performed at Idbury and Fifield near Bledington, but in Oxfordshire.

Slow Steps in Bledington Tunes

In some dances the normal fast steps are replaced by more elaborate, slower steps, requiring twice as much time. Two bars, in many cases, are replaced by 4 bars with notes twice the length. This occurs in the A music of jigs (solo dances in morris parlance), the B music of Cuckoo’s Nest, Gallant Hussar and William and Nancy, and the C music of Trunkles. In the fast version, there is generally a leading note before the 2 or more bars of stepping.

There are also slow steps in Glorisher, but I suggest they are better considered separately.

Three collectors were involved, each with a different approach.

• Cecil Sharp leaves the leading note(s) unchanged, then continuing with the appropriate number of slow bars. This keeps the stressed notes at what seem to me the appropriate points at the start and centre of the bars. It also corresponds to the way the same tunes were played in other villages, admittedly often also collected by Sharp. I have adopted this approach for the versions to play (or sing as on the website)

• George Butterworth puts a slow half bar at the beginning (2/4 or 3/8), followed by eg 3 slow bars, with a half bar at the end. Sharp collected Gallant Hussar from Charles Benfield, and with McIlwayne published it in Morris Book 3 and Morris tunes 5 as collected. In Morris Book 5 Sharp was joined by Butterworth, and they published the Butterworth version, even changing some of the steps. Unfortunately the later version has been perpetuated by L Bacon in his Handbook of Moris Dances, but I have found no traditional justification for this. I suspect that Butterworth was more concerned with the sale of music, than with accurately reproducing what the original musicians played.

• R Kenworthy Schofield doubles the number of bars to fit the slow steps. Unlike Sharp, he includes the leading note(s) in the slow music.

Index of tunes from Bledington

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AJP   Arthur L Peck
CB     Charles Benfield
CJS   Cecil J Sharp
GB    George Butterworth
GH   George Hathaway
JH    John Hickman
RB    Richard Bond
RKS R Kenworthy Schofield
TG    Ted Gibbs

Apart from the tunes listed above, a number of others are known, of which I have not been able to consult the sources. The following are mentioned in L. Bacon, Handbook of Morris Dancing:
Billy Boy (Constant Billy)
Flowers of Edinburgh
The Cuckoo’s Nest
Princess Royal
Jockie to the Fair
Shepherd’s Hey
There are also further versions of some of the tunes above.

note by Charles Menteith